Historic sketches of the South

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PUBLIC LIIJISAHY

ASTOK, LKNOX AND
TILDEN FOCR NATIONS
K j L

Drawn by Emma Roche.

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Historic Sketches of

the South

By

Emma Langdon Roche

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Drawings and Photographs by Author

tlbc ftnfcfterbocfter press

New York
1914

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375678B |

Copyright

by

EMMA LANGDON ROCHE

1914

ttbe Ititfcftetbocfccr flteM, Hew £orfc

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Beginnings of American Slavery . i

II. Early Legislation against the Slave
Traffic ....

III. Illegal Traffic in Slaves

* IV. Preparations for "Clotilde's*

Voyage ....
a"

^ V. The Capture of the Tarkars

VI. Voyage of the "Clotilde"

VII. The Return ....

VIII. The Tarkars at Dabney's Planta
V^ tion

IX. Tarkar Life in America

X. Impressions of Alabama in 1846*

1 Reprinted from "South Atlantic Quarterly" July, 1908.

X

■>
■*

t .

19
49

65

74
84

92

98
103
129

•••
in

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Frontispiece

Abach£ ....
Drawn by Emma Roche.

POLEETE ....

Drawn by Emma Roche.

Abach£ and Kazoola .
Map Drawn by Kazoola
Kazoola ....

Drawn by Emma Roche.

Wreck of the "Clotilde." .
Charlee . . . .
Olouala ....

Drawn by Emma Roche.

Charlee, Head of the Tarkars

Drawn by Emma Roche.

Kazoola ....

Zooma, the Last Tarkbar .

(i) Tarkar Village. (2) Dahomey's Land. (3)
Wavering line showing stealthy march of Dahomey-
ans through forest. (4) Route by which captive
Tarkars were taken to the sea. (5), (d), (?), (£),
Eko, Budigree, Abach€, Whydah, towns through
which Tarkars passed, (p) River. (10) Beach
and sea.

73

79
89

97

103
109

"7
127

131
139

Historic Sketches of the

South

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY

To fully understand the opposition of thought
wherein our " irrepressible conflict" had its incep-
tion and lay so long in embryo, to burst forth at
last in the awful and bloody travail of a nation
divided and at arms, some knowledge of the his-
tory and psychology of the peoples who settled
the American colonies is necessary ; for a nation's
cataclysms are not spontaneously generated, but
are the result of forces which though for genera-
tions are silent and hidden are gathering strength
under the evils of superstition, oppression, or
fanaticism, and only need such an explosive as
the tongue of a Danton, Robespierre, Garrison,
Beecher, or Stowe to hurl the people into death
and desolation.

* *

■#

- • *

2 Historic Sketches of the South

The early settlers who have left their impress on
American life and character were of the same
country and traditions, but their manners and
ideals had been developed by the opposing forces
which began to stir England during the Renais-
sance — a hundred and fifty years before the Refor-
mation — forces of which our own Civil War seems
as direct a sequence as were the religio-political
feuds of the 16th and 17th century England. In
the New World the exponents of these contrasting
forces were divided for the first century and a half
by what afterwards became known as Mason's
and Dixon's Line and by vast areas of uninhabited
wilderness.

Virginia was no Mecca for the religiously or
politically oppressed, but drew to her soldiers of
fortune — men impelled by a spirit of adventure,
or those who for some delinquency wished to lose
their identity in the vast, unknown New World;
among them were many gentlemen who more often
than not possessed the vices and follies of a corrupt
age. The first who became permanent settlers
were divided on the outward voyages by jealousies
and dissensions. These differences were carried

•

Beginnings of American Slavery 3

into the colony ; aggravated by the greed and self-
ishness of those placed in authority, they became
greater hardships than the illness, starvation, and
Indian treacheries which hampered early progress.
There were "poor gentlemen, Tradesmen, Serving-
men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit
to spoyle a Commonwealth, than either begin one,
or but helpe to maintain one. For when neither
the feare of God, nor the law, nor shame, nor dis-
pleasure of their friends could rule them here,
there is small hope ever to bring one in twenty of
them ever to be good there. Notwithstanding,
I confesse divers amongst them, had better mindes
and grew much more industrious than was ex-
pected." x Amid treacheries and deceits, John
Smith stands forth a hero. Through his thought
and action the colony not only survived the vi-
cissitudes of fire, starvation, and massacre, but
was saved from itself, for the evils of its own
lawless, disturbing elements were greater dangers
than those which came from without. The hope
of gold was ostensibly the colony's raison d'&tre:
4 'The worst of all was our gilded refiners with

1 Smith's Historic of Virginia.

4 Historic Sketches of the South

their golden promises made all men their slaves
in hope of recompenses; there was no talke, no
hope, no worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine
gold, loade gold, such a bruit of gold, that one
mad fellow desired to be buried in the sands least
they should by their art make gold of his bones."
This search for gold proved futile; in 1 615 the land
was parceled off to each settler in fifty-acre lots,
tobacco was planted, and thus began Virginia's
prosperity.

Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the
first Columbian voyagers and into England by
Raleigh and Drake. Despite the strong social and
religious pressure — even King James instituting a
propaganda which led him to write the Counter-
blast to Tobacco — the habit spread with alarming
rapidity, and was not confined to the men
alone; chewing and smoking were indulgences
common to the older women, while snuff was the
favorite with the younger ones. This new taste
created a demand which increased Virginia's popu-
lation and greatly extended her cultivated fields.
Women were scarce, and the planters growing
rich had a natural desire to return to England.

Beginnings of American Slavery 5

This, however, was obviated by the importation
of widows and virgins who were shipped to the
colony as any other cargo. The nature of this
bartering, which is unique in American history,
may best be described from a letter, dated August
2i, 1 62 1, which accompanied one of these cargoes
of colonial dames: "We send you in this ship
one widow and eleven maids for wives for the
people of Virginia. There hath been especial
care had in the choice of them, for there hath not
any one of them been received, but upon good
recommendations.

"In case they can not be presently married, we
desire that they be put in several households that
have wives, till they can be provided with hus-
bands. There are near fifty more which are
shortly to come, are sent by our most honorable
lord and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton (the
patron of Shakspere), and certain worthy gentle-
men, who taking into consideration that the plant-
ations can never flourish till families be planted,
and the respects of wives and children fix these
people on the soil, therefore have given this fair
beginning for the reimbursing those charges. It

6 Historic Sketches of the South

is ordered, that every man that marries them give
one hundred and twenty pounds of the best leaf
tobacco for each of them.

"Though we are desirous that the marriage be
free according to the law of nature, yet we would
not have these maids deceived and married to
servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as
have means to maintain them. We pray you,
therefore to be as a father to them in this business
not enforcing them to marry against their wills."

Labor for the ever-increasing fields was another
problem confronting the planter. King James
decided that the London Company should solve
this by transporting to Virginia English convicts,
who thus removed from old environments and
temptations might form a valuable industrial
asset. Only one shipload of a hundred was sent,
for about the same time a Dutch man-of-war
arrived at Jamestown (August, 1619) and twenty
negro slaves were sold to the planters. Qualms
about such a transaction could scarcely be ex-
pected, for through all historic times it was only
as a slave that the negro had been associated with
other races. In ancient times he had been sub-

Beginnings of American Slavery 7

servient to the Egyptians, bought for the Cartha-
ginian galleys ; slave to Assyrian, Arabian, Indian,
Greek, Etruscan, and Roman ; and in early Chris-
tian centuries sold by the Venetians to the Moors
of Spain. 1

1 " Their features are recorded by their ancient enemies, never
by themselves. Egyptian kings, who from earliest times of
antiquity, came often into collision with the blacks, and had
them figured as defeated enemies, as prisoners of war, and as sub-
ject nations bringing tribute. Their grotesque features, so much
differing from the Egyptian type, made them a favorite subject
for sculptural supports of thrones, chairs, vases, etc.; or painted
under the soles of sandals, of which instances abound in museums
as well as in the larger works on Egypt. . . . The other artistical
nations of antiquity knew little of the negro race. They did not
come before Solomon's epoch into immediate and constant con-
tact with it. We see soon after, however, a negro in an Assyrian
battle scene of the time of Sargon, at Korsabad. He might have
been exported from Memphis by Phoenician slave-dealers to
Asia, where he fell fighting for his master against the Assyrians.
... On the remarkable relief of the tomb of Darius Hystaspes, at
Persepolis, we have the negro as a representative of Africa.
The Greeks seldom drew the blacks; still, on beautiful vases of
the British Museum, we meet with the well known negro features
in a battle scene. Another such vase with the representation of
Hercules slaying negroes has been published by Mecali. Etrus-
can potters, who liked to draw Oriental types, molded vases in
the shape of a negro head and coupled it sometimes with the head
of white males or females. The British Museum contains
several of these very characteristic utensils. . . . We possess
effigies of negroes drawn by six different nations of antiquity:
Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans,
from about the eighteenth century B.C. to the first centuries of
our era, which all speak for the unalterable constancy of the
negro type such as in our day." — Nott and Gliddon's Indigenous
Races of the Earth.

8 Historic Sketches of the South

When the existence of new lands became known
and labor was needed for their development, the
negro's native country became a hunting ground
where he was not only stalked by the Dutch and
Portuguese, but by the French and English who
also had posts for that purpose in Africa. In fact
the English, including therein the colonists of New
England, became more extensively engaged in
the traffic than all other slave-trading European
nations combined. Compunctions about slavery
as about many other things came only with the
moral awakening of a later generation. " Scarcely
any one seems to have regarded the trade as wrong.
Theologians had so successfully labored to produce
a sense of the amazing, I might almost say gener-
ical, difference between those who were Christians
and those who were not, that to apply to the latter
the principles that were applied to the former,
would have been deemed a glaring paradox. If
the condition of the negroes in this world was
altered for the worse, it was felt that their pros-
pects in the next were greatly improved. Besides,
it was remembered that, shortly after the deluge
Ham had behaved disrespectfully to his drunken

Beginnings of American Slavery 9

father, and it was believed that the Almighty had,
in consequence, ordained negro slavery." 1 The
utility of the negro being at once proven, African
slavery had become something of an institution in
Virginia, before the Mayflower with its handful of
men, women, and children landed on Plymouth
Rock.

The stern, uncompromising attitude of these
people in whom there was no quibbling with right
or wrong as they perceived it, which gave them
the physical courage to endure persecution, muti-
lation, and even death, was the result of the religious
agitations which began in England with Wycliffe
and were directed against the oppressions and
corruptions which flourished within the Church's
powerful organization. Though suppressed, the
leaven had sifted down to the people who, stulti-
fied by centuries of grossest superstition, had
silently and patiently borne the yoke. In the stir-
rings of this religious Renaissance the book that
reached them was Wycliffe's translation of the
Bible; this gave to them the Semitic conception
of God — the one God — which the voices of those

1 Lecky, Rationalism in Europe.

io Historic Sketches of the South

u primitive Puritans the Prophets' ' had saved from
the obliterating dangers of idolatry and supersti-
tion. The stolid somberness of the Northern races
responded to the majestic swing of this wonderful
collection of Hebrew documents which traced a
people's struggles and thought development. Some
of its characters as Huxley says of "Jepthah, Gid-
eon, and Sampson are men of the old heroic stamp,
who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga
as where they are." Stray chapters sometimes
came into the possession of some yeoman who
was fortunate enough to read ; in silence and sec-
recy, when the day's work was done, there would
gather round him eager listeners. To know what
this book's message meant to them, one needs
but read their subsequent history. To hear it,
possess it, and believe it, they suffered the diabol-
ical tortures and fiendish perpetrations which at
once made martyrs and tyrants of men, and which
laid in England the foundation of what Ranke
calls the " heroic age of Protestantism in Western
Europe." Of this breed were the Pilgrims of
Plymouth Rock. Their inherent independence
had been fostered by a long exile in Leyden ; there

Beginnings of American Slavery n

the old Teutonic spirit of freedom had survived,
and had given her men that sublime courage and
determination, when besieged by the Duke of
Alva and starving, "that rather than yield they
would devour their left arms to enable them to
continue the defense with their right." x Ley den
afterwards became a haven for those of other coun-
tries who, breaking from prescribed thought, dared
to act accordingly. It was also a university center ;
political and religious tenets were subjects of com-
mon debate. Robinson who became one of the
Pilgrim fathers took an active part in these
discussions.

To these exiles the New World became a hope.
Though homeless, they were loyal to James.
While petitioning the London Company for
lands, they begged of him the freedom to there
worship God according to their own consciences.
Though this was not actually granted it was per-
mitted. An unkindly fate seemed to preside over
their voyage — buffeting storms drove them farther
north than their proposed destination; some his-
torians state they were purposely steered out of

1 Ranke, History of the Popes.

12 Historic Sketches of the South

their course by their Dutch pilot, and were forced
to land on Plymouth Rock.

By a solemn covenant entered into aboard ship,
they agreed that while they would be faithful to
the English Crown, the polity they would establish
among themselves would be an ideal state — a
community of interests — fascinating as expounded
by Plato, More, and Rousseau, but unfeasible for
human nature as yet evolved since complete
barbarism. United by a common faith — gloomy,
austere — putting aside as mortal sin all the joys
of life — forced to endure together in a wild, bleak,
strange land, starvation, disease, frightful cold,
and the terror of hostile Indians, by whom they
would have probably been exterminated had not
a deadly pestilence broken out among these
savages — possibly no better opportunity for
such an experiment has ever been offered civilized
man. But among them too was the natural in-
equality of individuals which will probably always
render futile and unenduring similar sociological
experiments.

The Puritan settlements were gradually aug-
mented by the persecuted from their native land,

Beginnings of American Slavery 13

and it would seem that they could at last possess
the religious security and contentment for which
they had so long clamored, but dissent had be-
come second nature; combativeness seemed essen-
tial to zeal, and as there was no Established or
Roman Church at which to hurl themselves, their
own tenets became mooted points; bitter differ-
ences arose. They showed themselves as intoler-
ant in the New World as they had been intolerable
in the Old, and those without the might to
prove their right were driven forth. In this
manner Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New
Hampshire were settled. Much of their later
history has to do with religious bickerings, mutila-
tions, and witch-burnings. It was an outgrowth
of this same spirit which confronted the South
for thirty years before the final rupture which
resulted in the War of Secession.

Thus from the beginning the North and the South
were necessarily distinctive ; settled under different
circumstances, the one drew from England the
stern, severe, and rigorously religious, while the
other became the habitat for the Puritan's oppo-
site — the impecunious gentleman, the roistering

14 Historic Sketches of the South

cavalier, the insolvent debtor, and the Catholic
nobleman — a class in which there had been a very
general "reversion from virtuous and noble man-
hood to the lewdness of the ape and the cunning
ferocity of the tiger." 1 In the New World
all alike were brought face to face with a great,
overshadowing nature which presented the
diversified physical conditions along which each
section's economic development would tend. Agri-
culture in austere New England would have been
a too uneven wrestling with nature; existence
wrought from the soil meant unending toil and
often heart-breaking disappointment, so the New
Eiiglander's pursuits became mercantile and sea-
faring — occupations in which the negro could
be of little value, but following England's in-
itiative he found the slave-trade profitable,
and the Southern planter a ready buyer. To
repress Nature's exuberance, the fields of to-
bacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and cane required
man's watchful care, and the negro, inured
through all previous generations to the sun and
rain, the jungle and the swamp, properly directed,

* Dean Parrar.

Ik

Beginnings of American Slavery 15

became, and still is, the ideal laborer for work
of the soil.

Since then our "mental endyses" have been
many; we have associations for the prevention of
cruelty to animals, and sympathetic and indignant
thrills pass through us at sight of ill-treatment to
one of these, so we cannot bring our attitude of
to-day or of the last hundred years to judge the
beginnings of American slavery. To 16th and
17th century Europeans it was palpable that
the difference between the negro and the man-
like apes was no greater than that existing
between the negro and themselves, and it was
debatable "with that bruitishness which com-
monly appeareth in all their actions whether the
people generally may be thought to be men in the
skins of beasts; or beasts created in the likenesse
and shape of man." 1 The sentimentality which
obtained some years ago and which led to such
bitter hatred and misunderstanding seems almost
maudlin when that phase of the question in which
the indescribable wretchedness of the negro in his
native land is considered — his gross and pitiable

1 Heylyn's Cosmo graphie, 1657.

16 Historic Sketches of the South

superstitions, his indifference to death and his regard
for cruelty as a virtue; what slavery did for him
seems analogous to what we suppose primitive man
accomplished with the wolf — adopted it from the
wild and made of it a faithful, domestic animal.
True, the motives were utility and gain, but who
can deny the mighty uplift in value and sagacity,
both for the dog and the negro? Among the
African tribes described in Pigafetta's account of
Lopez's African Travels (1598), and spoken of by
Hey lyn in his Cosmographie ( 1 65 7) , are the Anziques,
"the cruellest Cannibals in the world; for they do
not onely eat their Enemies, but their friends and
Kinsf oik. And that they may be sure not to want
these Dainties, they have shambles of man's
flesh, as in other parts of Beef and Mutton. So
covetous withall, that if their Slaves will yield but a
penny more when sold joynt by joynt than if sold
alive, they will cut them out, and sell them upon
the shambles. Yet with these barbarous quali-
ties they have many good ... of so great fidelity
to their masters and to those which trust them,
that they will rather choose to be killed than either
abuse the trust, or betray their Masters. For

t

Beginnings of American Slavery 17

that cause more esteemed by the Portugals than
other Slaves." So even the most bloodthirsty
possessed potentially the quality of faithfulness,
which when he was removed from his natural
environment — where for thousands of years he had
not progressed — made all his later development
possible, and which aside from the cases where
there has been an infusion of white or Indian
blood, is largely responsible for what the best type
of American negro is to-day. It was this quality,
fostered by care and kindness, that has filled
Southern tradition with touching and oftentimes
heroic incidents of the slave's devotion. When
the old differences of Puritan and Cavalier, under
other guises, called men to arms, it was to the
fidelity of these blacks that the Southerner trusted
wife, children, and home. That this trust was sel-
dom violated is sufficient encomium for master and
slave. Under the regime established in many
places, after emancipation had converted the
"slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperized
man " (Huxley), when he was incited to open rebel-
lion and nameless atrocities, to what sorrows would
the desolated South have been subjected, had the

t

18 Historic Sketches of the South

old status of master and slave been different?
Had the South been guilty of the charges laid to
her door, despite Klu-Klux Klans and other pre-
cautions, the negro's temper would have been
much the same as that of the French canaille, who
during the Commune "drank blood to vomit
crime." They had shown, in the San Domingo in-
surrections, that revenge lay within their nature.

CHAPTER II

EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST SLAVERY

The Cavalier and adventurer in working out
their destiny in the New World became purged of
the foibles that continued to debauch their com-
peers in England; among their descendants of a
few generations were those men of unimpeachable
honor and integrity of purpose who will be held
forever as the highest types of American chivalry
and manhood. Those of Virginia, with whom
colonial slavery was most ancient, were the first
to be aroused to the full ethical significance of the
evil — to the grave injustice to the unfortunate
lower race, and to the detriment to the moral
nature of the higher. They were the first to at-
tempt to legislate against the evil. In 1770,
Virginia protested against the importation of
slaves, but to no avail as royalty itself was finan-
cially interested in the traffic. At the meeting

of the delegates from each county of Virginia held

19

20 Historic Sketches of the South

at Williamsburg in August, 1774, to consider
British oppression and indignities, the second
article of the protest resolved and agreed upon
bore upon the slave traffic: "We will neither our-
selves import nor purchase any slave, or slaves,
imported by any person, after the first day of
November next, either from Africa, the West
Indies, or any other place." This meeting was a
full one, and among the one hundred and eight
signers— all prominent in Virginia lif e and annals-
are Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George
Washington, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry,
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Marshall, Thomas
Randolph, and Francis Lightfoot Lee. The in-
structions of Thomas Jefferson, with whom the
abolition of slavery was always a great aim, to the
Virginia delegates to the first Congress (August,
1774), voiced the sentiments of Virginia's most
thoughtful men: "For the most trifling reason,
and sometimes for no reason at all, His Majesty
has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency.
The abolition of domestic slavery is the great
object of desire in those colonies, where it was,
unhappily introduced in their infant state. But

t

Early Legislation against Slavery 21

previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we
have, it is necessary to exclude all further importa-
tions from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts
to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing
duties which might amount to a prohibition have
been hitherto defeated by His Majesty's negative;
thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few
British corsairs to the lasting interests of the
American States, and to the rights of human nature
deeply wounded by this inhuman practise."

Not only was every effort of the Southern colo-
nists opposed by England's monarch, but with the
breaking out of open hostilities his agents were
commissioned to arm and instigate the slaves
against their masters. x Many lured by the prom-
ise of land and freedom flocked to the British
standard; they were sent into Nova Scotia.
Suffering from cold and becoming discontented
by the non-fulfillment of the promises of aggran-

1 " You may observe, by my proclamation, that I offer freedom
to the blacks of all rebels that join me, in consequence of which
there are between two and three hundred already come in, and
those I form into corps as fast as they come in, giving them white
officers and non-commissions in proportion." — Letter from Lord
Dunmore to General Howe, dated Williamsburg, Va., Nov. 30,

1775.

22 Historic Sketches of the South

dizement, they were finally sent to Sierra Leone,
which in the following seventy-five years received
the thousands taken by the British from the
slavers.

During this fearful crisis, Virginia's spirit to-
wards these misguided people was one of mercy
and humanitarianism. At the next convention it
was resolved: "Whereas Lord Dunmore, by his
proclamation, dated on board the ship William
off Norfolk, the 7th day of November, 1775, hath
offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are
willing to join him, and take up arms against the
good people of this colony, giving encouragement
to a general insurrection, which may induce a
necessity of inflicting the severest punishments
upon these unhappy people already deluded by
his base and insiduous arts, and whereas, by an
act of the general assembly now in force in this
colony, it is enacted, that all negro, or other slaves,
conspiring to rebel or make insurrection, shall suf-
fer death, and be excluded all benefit of clergy —
we think it proper to declare, that all slaves who
have been, or shall be seduced by his lordship's
proclamation, or others to desert their masters'

1

Early Legislation against Slavery 23

service and take up arms against the inhabitants
of this colony, shall be liable to such punishment •
as shall hereafter be directed by the conventions
And to the end that all such, who have taken this •
unlawful and wicked step, may return in safety,
to their duty, and escape the punishment due their
crimes, we hereby promise pardon to them, sur-
rendering themselves to Colonel William Woodford
or any other commander of our troops, and not
appearing in arms after the publication hereof.
And we do further earnestly recommend it to all
humane and benevolent persons in the colony,
to explain and make known this offer of mercy
to those unfortunate people."

About this time, some feeling against American
slavery, but more against the "aristocratic spirit
of Virginia and the Southern colonists/ ' stirred
England, and a general enfranchisement of the
slaves was proposed. Edmund Burke, in his
famous speech of March 22, 1775, on the "Con-
ciliation with America/ ' touches on the incongruity
of such a proposition of freedom coming from
England : " Slaves as these unfortunate black people
are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they

24 Historic Sketches of the South

not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that
very nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with
those masters is their refusal to deal any more in
that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from
England would come rather oddly, shipped to
them in an African vessel, which is refused entry
into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo
of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be
curious to see the Guinea captain attempt at the
same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty
and to advertise the sale of slaves."

After throwing off the British yoke, the aboli-
tion of the slave traffic and of slavery was still a
paramount issue with these men of Virginia, and
in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had
drafted a clause relative to the moral obliquity;
this clause, "reprobating the enslaving the in-
habitants of Africa, was struck out in complai-
sance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had
never attempted to restrain the importation of
slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to
continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I be-
lieve, felt a little tender under these censures ; for
though their people had few slaves themselves,

Early Legislation Against Slavery 25

yet they had been very considerable carriers
of them to others." 1

The disposition to emancipate was strongest in
Virginia. In 1778, when Jefferson introduced a
bill into the Assembly to stop the f urther importa-
tion of slaves either by land or sea — a fine of one
thousand pounds to be imposed upon any trans-
gressor — it was passed without opposition and
temporarily decreased the evil, but the time was
not ripe for so philanthropic an innovation, and
the bill was repealed by a later Assembly. Many
of the younger men, however, were imbued with a
realization of the evil, especially those who at
William and Mary's College, had come under the
influence of George Wythe, and it was to these
that many looked for the ultimate righting of the
wrong. Adumbrations of a future catastrophe
broke upon Jefferson, but in that period of patri-
otism, his almost prophetic vision saw not the dim,
distant conflict as one arising out of the inherent
differences of North and South, though this came
to sadden his declining years, but rather as one of
race against race: "Indeed I tremble for my

* Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson.

26 Historic Sketches of the South

country when I reflect that God is just ; that His
justice cannot sleep forever ; that considering num-
bers, nature, and natural means only, a revolu-
tion of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of
situation is among possible events." The hope
of eradicating negro slavery before it took a too
vital hold upon the needs and institutions of his
land stirred his patriotic and spiritual zeal;
throughout a long life he took a vigorous stand
against its growth. In 1784, when Virginia gave
to the United States her portion of the Northwest
Territory, it was Jefferson, assisted by Chase and
Howell, who drafted and ardently advocated the
ordinance that "after the year 1800 there should
be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
any of the said States, otherwise than in punish-
ment of crime." This was defeated, but led to
the Ordinance of 1787 which forever excluded
slavery from the territory northwest of the Ohio
River.

At the Constitutional Convention held in Phila-
delphia in 1787, Jefferson urged as a step towards
the ultimate ending of slavery, the immediate
abolition of the importation, but Pinckney of

Early Legislation Against Slavery 27

South Carolina moved that the traffic be extended
until 1808, and he was seconded by Gorman of
Massachusetts. The motion carried in all the
New England States, in South Carolina, Georgia,
and Maryland; Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jer-
sey, and Delaware were against it. This exigency
of extending it for twenty years was a subject of
grave apprehension to many thoughtful and patri-
otic men who were slave owners, among them
Jefferson, Washington, and Madison; though the
attitude of the last was frequently ambiguous
about many questions, he commits himself very
fully on this clause of the Constitution in The
Federalist: "It were doubtless to be wished that
the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves
had not been postponed until 1808, or, rather,
that it had been suffered to have immediate
operation. But it is not difficult to account either
for the restriction on the general government or
for the manner in which the whole clause is ex-
pressed. It ought to be considered as a great
point gained in favor of humanity, that a period
of twenty years may terminate forever within
these States, a traffic which has so long and so

J

28 Historic Sketches of the South

loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern
polity."

It may be assumed that the majority of those
engaged in framing the Constitution regarded
slavery as a domestic problem nearing its end,
and it was a policy which at that time received
more vehement denunciation from men of the
South than those of the North, probably because
a part of the North was actively engaged in the
traffic and that the humanitarians of the South,
born in the midst of slavery, were not only awake
to the ethical significance of the evil, but were
averse to raising within their midst thousands
of an alien race. That the disposition to discon-
tinue all avenues which led to a continuation of
slavery was not more general was incomprehensible
to Jefferson, and absolutely out of harmony with
the spirit of freedom which permeated American
life: "What a stupendous, what an incomprehen-
sible machine is man ! who can endure toil, famine,
stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindica-
tion of his own liberty, and the next moment be
deaf to all those motives whose power supported
him through trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a

Early Legislation Against Slavery 29

bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more
misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion
to oppose. But we must await, with patience,
the workings of an over-ruling Providence, and
hope that that is preparing the deliverance of
those, our suffering brethren. When the measure
of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall
have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless,
a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and
by diffusing light and liberality among their op-
pressors, or at length, by his exterminating thun-
der, manifest his attention to the things of this
world, and that they are not left to the guidance
of a blind fatality." x

This constitutional postponement did not
even settle the question temporarily. The Quakers
presented a memorial for the abolition of the
slave trade to the very first Congress (1790).
This was reported by a committee to the whole
House; and after various amendments was re-
turned with the following :

"1st, That migration or importation of such
persons, as any of the States now existing shall

1 Jefferson's observations to Meunier.

30 Historic Sketches of the South

think proper to admit, can not be prohibited by
Congress prior to the year 1808.

" 2d, That Congress have no authority to inter-
fere in emancipation of slaves or in the treatment
of them within any of the States; it remaining
with the several States alone to provide any regu-
lations therein, which humanity and true polity
may require."

This was a perilous and critical time — a time of
trial for the new Constitution — when the States,
watchful and alert, were jealous of their rights,
and the Quakers' action was regarded by many as
a flagrant violation of those rights. Washington
considered their petition inopportune, especially
as the question had been recently disposed of and
was contained in an article of the Constitution,
and so expressed himself in a letter : " The memorial
of the Quakers [and a very malapropos one it was]
has at length been put to sleep, and will scarcely
awake before the year 1808." However, the
Quakers' attitude was not equivocal, as was that
of the Puritan New Englander. Their petition
grew from earnest convictions — convictions which
were deep-rooted before they came to America,

Early Legislation Against Slavery 31

for they had expressed their repugnance to the
English slave trade in 1671, and after coming to
America had discouraged participation in slavery
as early as 1696; in 1776 they placed their ulti-
matum upon it by excluding from membership
any Quaker slaveholder.

This constitutional extension of the slave
traffic closed all possibility of the question ever
being settled amicably. Short-sightedness can
scarcely be charged to those responsible, for at
that time there was no thought of an acquisition
of territory on the south and southwest, and the
cultivation of cotton was still in its infancy. Be-
fore another decade Eli Whitney had invented
the cotton-gin ; this gave an impetus to the growing
of cotton; agriculture in the South was revolu-
tionized. To make way for the industry Georgia
ceded her western territory to the United States
and a tide of Southern immigration from the older
centers of Virginia and the Carolinas rapidly
flowed into Alabama and Mississippi. The wan-
derlust of a hardy, pioneer ancestry was in these
men's veins. Accompanied often by gentle fami-
lies, their household goods, and their negroes they

32 Historic Sketches of the South

started overland. By long and tedious journey- '
ings, across mountain, stream, and swamp —
through seemingly boundless stretches of majestic
pines — sometimes encountering hostile Indians
and again exchanging friendly courtesies with the
friendly Choctaws and Chickasaws, they reached
the new frontier, and established themselves along
the river courses. Others came by sailing vessels,
and passing through the French and Spanish
cities of Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans,
followed the river courses into the interior. The
log cabins which sprang up in the wilderness,
were soon supplanted by comfortable, substantial
homes frequently built of brick made upon the
plantations or of hand-hewn lumber ; each became '
a nucleus of activities around which all things nec-
essary for the maintenance of life were produced.
On the well-ordered plantations the African was
not only field laborer and faithful domestic,
but became cobbler, mason, carpenter, and a
spinner and weaver of cotton and wool. In this
virgin region, far removed from the life and influ-
ences of the older States, there grew up a vital and
mutual dependence between master and slave;

Early Legislation Against Slavery 33

as such, each was necessary to the other; but it
was not a combination out of which sentiments for
the ultimate freedom of the negro were apt to
grow ; and it was these who were farthest removed
from the later machinations of the Abolitionists,
who were most bitter and strenuous in their oppo-
sition. In this close relation which in all but rare
exceptions was a kindly one, the Southerner came
to know the negro as the negro then could not
know himself, realized his limitations, directed
him along useful lines, and knew how rapidly he
would revert were the civilizing and humanizing
influence of slavery as it existed in the South
removed. In later years when Southerners stood
before a questioning world, there was no sophistry
in the protests of those who declared that slavery
was beneficial, and it was an argument resting
upon truth that the Southern negro's condition
was happier than that of the laboring classes in
other parts of the world.

European events also conspired towards an
extension of slavery. After the French troops,
already depleted by yellow fever, were defeated

by the negro insurgents at San Domingo, Napo-

3

34 Historic Sketches of the South

leon realized the uncertainty of France retaining
the great Louisiana Territory which had been
but recently repossessed from Spain. To cir-
cumvent the English, who had long coveted this
domain, Napoleon, in 1803, offered it to the United
States for fifteen million dollars. American settlers
along the Mississippi had already experienced diffi-
culties with the Spanish who claimed complete
control of the Mississippi River south of the Yazoo,
and though Congress had been given no constitu-
tional prerogative for acquiring new territory,
Jefferson, who was then President, saw the varied
importance of this acquisition, and successfully
and with very little criticism directed the nego-
tiations. This brought into the United States,
not only a vast terra incognita, but an extensive
Franco-Spanish civilization stretching along the
Gulf of Mexico, with French outposts scattered
along the great river systems and reaching into
the very heart of America.

The divergence of this civilization from that of
English colonization was not only racial, but its
tone had been qualified by the spirit in which the
settlements had been made and the polity adopted

Early Legislation Against Slavery 35

by each. It possessed nothing of New England's
austerity, or of Virginia's somewhat stolid state-
liness, but was characterized by a graceful pic-
turesqueness and a delightful bonhomie. The
black-robed priest if not the pathfinder who
blazed the way for French settlements was usu-
ally the comrade and companion of those who did.
Religion and settlement went hand in hand.
None of the torturing and enslaving methods
used by the Puritans to force upon the natives a
cold, stern religion, unattractive even to other
Christian sects, or by the Spanish in Mexico and
Florida, were resorted to by the French. Where-
ever there was a priest, Mass began the day. The
mystic ceremony, performed in the dewy fresh-
ness of early morning within the forest's depths,
or on a strip of sandy beach beside the mighty
waters; the solemn gestures of the celebrant and
the adoring attitude of the worshippers appealed
to the Indian imagination, and the French were
soon importuned to invoke their Great Spirit to
aid the red man, to bring rain or to heal the sick
or wounded.
From Mobile, the oldest and for many years the

36 Historic Sketches of the South

chief French settlement, the genius of Iberville
and Bienville Lemoyne, aided by ardent and inde-
fatigable missioners, reached out to remote Indian
tribes, conciliating and binding them as allies.
They dealt fairly with the Indian, but in cases of
treachery used the Indian's own method of punish-
ment. From the Indians they also adopted the
custom of making slaves of hostile captives.
Negro slavery also existed in these settlements
from very early years, for in the quaint baptismal
register of 1 704-1 778, forming a part of the
archives of the Catholic Cathedral of Mobile, is
recorded the baptism of two negro children be-
longing to Bienville in 1707, and in the same year
a negro woman belonging to him bore the first
negro child born on the Gulf coast. x

Gold was not found, nor did the French settle-
ments on the Gulf lay in the wake of the treasure-
ladened Spanish galleons, but the climate was
benign, the lands rich, and the forests afforded an
abundance of food, and in times of scarcity Bien-
ville sometimes quartered his soldiers among the
friendly natives. There was leisure for the ameni-

1 Hamilton's Colonial Mobile.

Early Legislation Against Slavery 37

ties, and the priest and nun who had given up life
and ambition in the Old World were not only the
spiritual advisers and educators of the young of
New France, but as missioners guided and in-
structed the Indian and the slave. Their insti-
tutions became asylums for the sick and desolate
of any race, and to their influence may be traced
the easy, happy condition of the negro slave
among the French of Louisiana. There was that
in the temperament of these French which while
appropriating the Indian's and negro's usefulness
at the same time beguiled and won them. An
incident of a slave's heroic loyalty to the French
is related by Gayarr6 in his Louisiana. After the
French settlements passed under Spanish control,
New Orleans revolted, and the leaders were sen-
tenced to be shot; Jeannot the negro hangman
cut off his right arm rather than raise it against a
Frenchman.

In March, 1724, Bienville issued a code, one
clause of which forbade marriages between whites
and blacks. Such marriages had taken place,
and had given rise to what afterwards became an
extensive Afro-Latin population. In many places

38 Historic Sketches of the South

along the Gulf coast it is among these so-called
Creoles who have clung to their original habita-
tions along the river banks, the creeks, and bays,
that the old French names are found and a patois
spoken. The result of this amalgamation did not
seem mongrel, but distinctive, and in their local
history, covering two hundred years, during
which time they have lived under five different
flags, there has been a pride of race which has kept
the original strain pure. Deeply religious, they
have been characterized by honesty, frugality,
and industry. They were never slaves, but were
in many instances slave owners.

A Societe des Amis des Noirs had been formed
in Paris, in 1788. Its object was to end the slave
•trade and slavery, especially in San Domingo
from which came many reports of cruelty and
oppression. A little later, France in establishing
the rights and equality of man passed through
her awful revolution. Though Louisiana was in
constant touch and sympathy with France, among
her peaceful, pleasure-loving people no sentiment
about negro freedom or equality seems to have
been evolved. When this great territory passed

Early Legislation Against Slavery 39

into the United States, it carried with it its insti-
tution of slavery, which, established as it was in
the habits and thoughts of these people, strength-
ened slavery's hold upon the South, pushed fur-
ther away, and complicated with added difficulties
the fulfillment of the hope of those great Southern-
ers who had looked for its gradual and peaceful ter-
mination. In the government of this new territory
we again meet with the large vision of Jefferson
and his desire to curtail slavery. Outside import-
ations were forbidden, and only slaves who had
been brought to this country before 1798 could be
carried by their masters for the purpose of settle-
ment into Louisiana. All others carried in would
be freed and the penalty for each offense would
be three hundred dollars.

To prepare the seafaring interests for the
statute of 1808, and to lead American sentiment
to its acceptance, Congress in the early part of
the same year (1803) prohibited after April 1,
1803, the importation of any persons of color, or
the entry of any vessels containing such persons
into those States whose laws already debarred
such importation. Indians were not included in

40 Historic Sketches of the South

this prohibition. The penalty for the first viola-
tion was a fine of one thousand dollars for every
such person, one half to be appropriated to the
United States and the other to be given to the
informer. For the latter offense, the vessel and
all appurtenances were to be confiscated by the
United States, one half the net proceeds to be
given to such "person or persons on whose
information the seizure of such forfeiture shall
be made." x

When New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804,
this statute obtained in all the Northern States,
In their economy slavery was an incubus. This
statute imposed no financial sacrifice on individu-
als, for in most cases the relatively few slaves had
been transferred and sold in the South. Though
there were threatening party differences, as yet
there seems no general feeling against slavery in
those States to which it was peculiar, and such
sentiments as were entertained were more abstract
than those common in the South itself. 2 Many

1 United States Statutes at Large.

2 "The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England who is now here
soliciting donations for a college in Green County, in Tennessee,
tells me that when he first determined to engage in this enterprise,

Early Legislation Against Slavery 41

Northern fortunes had been built upon the slave
trade; though prohibiting the importation into
their own States, numbers were still actively en-
gaged in the traffic — and the Southern States
were the only ports legally open to them, for an
act forbidding the direct or indirect importation
of slaves into foreign countries had become a
United States statute in 1794. The South itself
seldom engaged in this traffic — it was a degrada-
tion to which her aristocratic tendencies could not
stoop; a "nigger-trade" was taboo; and though
slave vessels plied to and from her ports, they were
usually a part of Yankee enterprise,

Jefferson, to whom the question had so long
been a momentous one, welcomed the time when
the traffic would end, and in his sixth annual

he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he
meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one for persons
in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams
to put his name, he being then President, and the application
going only for his name and not a donation. Mr. Adams, after
reading the paper and considering, said, He saw no possibility
of continuing the union of the States; that their dissolution must
necessarily take place; that he therefore saw no propriety in
recommending to New England men to promote a literary insti-
tution in the South; that it was in fact giving strength to those
who were to be their enemies; and therefore he would have
nothing to do with it." — Thomas Jefferson, The Anas, Dec. 13,
1803.

\

42 Historic Sketches of the South

message to Congress, December 2, 1806, rejoiced
"on the approach of the period at which you may-
interpose your authority constitutionally, to with-
draw the citizens of the United States from all
further participation in those violations of human
rights which have so long continued on the un-
offending inhabitants of Africa, and which the
morality, the reputation, and the best interests of
the country have long been eager to proscribe/'
With the first of January, 1808, it became un-
lawful for any person of color to be imported into
the United States or her territory; any person
aiding or abetting such traffic to be fined five
thousand dollars; also "any citizen of the United
States, building, fitting out, equipping, loading
or otherwise preparing or sending away any ship
or vessel, knowing that the same shall be employed
in such trade or business" shall pay twenty thou-
sand dollars, a part to go to the United States and
another to any person or persons who shall prose-
cute the offender. Every vessel found engaged
in the traffic was to be "seized, prosecuted, and
condemned in any of the circuit courts or district
courts where the said ship or vessel may be found

Early Legislation Against Slavery 43

or seized." The President was authorized to use
the naval and revenue forces to enforce the statute.
They were to cruise on the coast of the United
States and her territories; to seize and bring to
port vessels contravening the provisions of the
act, the captain or commander to be prosecuted
before any court of the United States having juris-
diction thereof; and if convicted to be fined not
more than ten thousand dollars, and to be subject
to imprisonment to not more than four years. 1

These and further enactments of a like nature
ended constitutionally the slave traffic in the
United States. Many New Englanders had noth-
ing f urther to gain ; there was no legitimate finan-
cial emolument now standing between them and a
realization of the ethical side of the slave question.
Instead of lending a conservative help to those of

the South who hoped by gradual and conciliatory
methods to loose slavery's growing hold upon

their institutions, through a curious psychological

metamorphosis they began to look askance upon

the South and its institution of slavery, and to

affiliate in thought with the abolition movement

1 United States Statutes at Large.

44 Historic Sketches of the South

which under Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others
was stirring England ; forgetting in their zeal that
the wrongs which Clarkson and Wilberforce were
championing were the wrongs of which England
and New England as slave traders had been the
chief perpetrators. This growing sentiment was
seized upon by politicians and played upon for
party purposes. It was with increased apprehen-
sion that they saw the extension of the slave
interests which the purchase of Louisiana had
necessitated, and the further representation these
interests would be given as new States were formed
from the slave territory. For a decade this jeal-
ousy was kept within safe bounds by any pre-
ponderance of representation being checkmated
and balanced by the formation of a Free State.
Yet this feeling was becoming rapidly contagious,
spreading to many who had not previously thought
of slavery, or who regarded it as a domestic policy
to be settled by the Slave States individually and
exclusively. With the development of the Mis-
souri controversy, the temperamental divergence
born of several centuries of turmoil and turbulence
in England, and too deep-rooted to be really dead,

Early Legislation Against Slavery 45

roused from the anesthesia of united effort against
a common enemy and a subsequent enthusiasm
for Union, and stood forth definitely defined as
North and South. Forgetful of the give and take
necessary for the harmonious existence of polities
as of individuals, the country was still not large
enough or the political interests sufficiently varied,
for such differences to be conducive to well-being.
In his Presidential farewell Washington warned
his countrymen against a geographical division
of interests: "In contemplating the causes which
may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of
serious concern, that any ground should have been
furnished for characterizing parties by geographical
discrimination, . . . northern and southern . . .
Atlantic and western ; whence designing men may
endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real
difference of local interests and views. One of
the expedients of party to acquire influence within
particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions
and aims of other districts. You cannot shield
yourselves too much against the jealousies and
heart-burnings which spring from these misrep-
resentations; they tend to render alien to each

46 Historic Sketches of the South

other those who ought to be bound together by
fraternal affection." To Jefferson, aged and wait-
ing, this Missouri controversy and its adjustment,
was the alarum in which he heard the death-knell
of the Union, and in a letter to John Holmes, dated
Monticello, April 22, 1820, he so expresses him-
self: "I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have
been so kind as to send me of the letter to your
constituents on the Missouri question. It is a
perfect justification to them. I had for a long
time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any atten-
tion to public affairs, confident they were in good
hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark
to the shore from which I am not far distant. But
this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the
night, awakened and filled me with terror. I
considered it at once as the death-knell of the
Union. It is hushed indeed, for the moment.
But this is a reprieve only, not the final sentence.
A geographical line, coinciding with a marked
principle, moral and political, once conceived and
held up to the angry passions of men, will never
be obliterated ; and every new irritation will mark
it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious

Early Legislation Against Slavery 47

truth, that there is not a man on earth who would
sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from
this heavy reproach, in any practical way. The
cession of that kind of property (for so it is mis-
named) is a bagatelle, which would not cost me a
second thought, if in that way a general emancipa-
tion and expatriation could be effected ; and gradu-
ally, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be.
But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we
can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice
is in one scale and self-preservation in the other.
Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of
slaves from one Free State to another would not
make a slave of a single human being who would not
be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater
surface would make them individually happier,
and proportionately facilitate the accomplish-
ment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden
on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence,
too, from this act of power, would remove the
jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress
to regulate the condition of the different descrip-
tions of men comprising a State. This certainly
is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing

48 Historic Sketches of the South

in the Constitution has taken from them, and given
to the General Government. Could Congress,
for example, say that the non-freemen of Connec-
ticut could be freemen, or that they shall not
emigrate to another State?

11 1 regret that I am now to die in the belief that
the useless sacrifice of themselves of the generation
of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness
to their country, is to be thrown away, by the
unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and
that my only consolation is to be that I shall not
live to weep over it. If they would dispassion-
ately weigh the blessings they will throw away
against an abstract principle, more likely to be
effected by union than by scission, they would
pause before they would perpetrate this act of
suicide on themselves, and of treason against the
hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful
advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my
high esteem and respect."

CHAPTER III

ILLEGAL TRAFFIC IN SLAVES

Legislation against habits which by an evolu-
tion of sentiment have become moral issues is
always followed by flagrant violations, for men are
usually loth to acquiesce in things which they
consider a curtailment of their livelihood. For a
century and a half, the slave traffic had been an
immense source of revenue for a large class of
citizens. Despite the constitutional prohibition,
the imposition of heavy fines and the offer of large
rewards, the traffic in negroes continued to flourish
— nor was it carried on with any great degree of
surreptitiousness. Vessels intended for this pur-
pose were built with a reference to speed and were
probably the fleetest craft afloat.

In the early years of the Union the revenue and
naval forces were necessarily small and the coast
a vast and sparsely inhabited one. Algerian
pirates called for a part of their strength, and their

4 49

50 Historic Sketches of the South

energies were again directed against the British
in 1 8 12; pirates harassed commerce off the South
Atlantic States and in the Gulf of Mexico — Lafitte
establishing a kingdom at Barataria, an island
in the lower Mississippi, from which sailed many
piratical expeditions, and where a brisk trade in
slaves was carried on. Though our naval force
seemed inadequate it had been singularly success-
ful against these outside adversaries. These
preoccupations seem scarcely sufficient excuse
for the flourishing condition of the illegal traffic
in slaves. Money, politics, and indifference ap-
pear to have been a trinity that glossed over rot-
tenness then as now. Obscure harbors and lonely
shores were not always the destination of these
hell-craft, but they sailed to and from the prin-
cipal seaport towns. With scarcely an exception
they were fitted up by New Englanders and New
Yorkers and manned by down-east seamen;
Rhode Island led with Connecticut, Massachusetts
and New York as close seconds. The West Indies
and Brazil offered a market, and some found their
way into Southern ports, where, through the co-
operation of an equally criminal class of Southern-

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 51

ers, the unfortunate, contraband humans were
sold.

While the middle passage before 1808 was a
veritable inferno, it was afterwards characterized
by a barbarity which should have sickened the
soul of all humanity, yet the voice and sentiment
of humane, law-abiding Americans were not strong
enough to make this traffic impossible. Cyrus
King in a speech on the Missouri Question, in
1 8 19, described the shameless situation: "It well
might be supposed that the slave trade would in
practice be extinguished; that virtuous men
would by their abhorrence stay its polluted march
and the wicked would be overawed by its potent
punishment, but unfortunately the case is far
otherwise. We have but melancholy proofs from
unquestionable sources that it is still carried on
with all the implacable ferocity — and insatiable
rapacity — of former times. Avarice has grown
more subtile in its evasions; and watches and
seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather
than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American
citizens are steeped up to tfyeir very mouths (I
scarcely use too bold a figure) in this stream of

52 Historic Sketches of the South

iniquity? They throng the coasts of Africa under
the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, sometimes
selling abroad their 'cargoes of despair/ and
sometimes bringing them into some of our South-
ern ports, and there, under the forms of law, de-
feating the purpose of the law itself, and legalizing
their inhuman but profitable adventures."

Those so unfortunate as to have been brought
into any of the Southern States were by the
Constitution "subject to any regulations, not
contravening the provisions of the act, which
the legislatures of the several states or terri-
tories at any time hereafter may make, for dis-
posing of any such negro, mulatto, or person
of color." As some extenuation for those
Southern States, let it be asked, What was to
be done with these unfortunate Africans? Bar-
barians all — often of the lowest type — and
sometimes cannibals — could they be given free-
dom? The attention of thinking men was
early directed to the status of the free black;
how to place him to his own best advantage that
his position as a citizen would not be equivocal ;
and to avoid arousing by his idle example or de-

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 53

signing machinations, discord, dissatisfaction, and
even mutiny among the slaves. In 1803, a coloni-
zation plan was discussed in the Virginia Assembly ;
this led to a correspondence on the subject between
Madison, who was then Governor, and President
Jefferson. Out of this was born in 1816, what
soon became a very active organization, the
American Colonization Society. After negotia-
tions, lands were secured on the west coast of
Africa at Cape Mesurada. There the society
established a colony to which such free blacks as
desired might be conveyed, and which was also
to receive the Africans taken from slavers, or
those found to have been smuggled into the coun-
try by traders. During all the years of the soci-
ety's activities the unfortunates reached by their
clemency were small in proportion to those sur-
reptitiously sold into bondage; this was due to the
powerful abettors — often legalized ones — of the
traffic. A lack of intelligent forethought was
responsible for disheartening results in their early
efforts at colonization. But the society's efforts
at home were more successful by fostering a spirit
against the trade, and it was instrumental in

54 Historic Sketches of the South

regulating the laws in some of the Southern States
which were so ambiguous as to aid rather than
crush the trade. 1 In 1819, Congress stipulated
that contraband Africans were to be taken from
State jurisdiction to become wards of the Govern-
ment, and the President was authorized to make
"such regulations and arrangements as he may
deem expedient for the safe-keeping, support, and
removal beyond the limits of the United States,
of all such negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color,
as may be so delivered and brought within their
jurisdiction. And to appoint a proper person or
persons, residing upon the coast of Africa, as
agent or agents for receiving negroes, etc., deliv-
ered from on board vessels, seized in the prosecu-
tion of trade by commanders of the United States
armed vessels." In 1819, Congress acting upon a
memorial presented by the Colonization Society,
declared the slave traffic to be piracy punishable
with death. In this same year the statute of 1 809
was enlarged and made more stringent and
the President was empowered to send armed
vessels along the African coast. One hundred

1 North American Review, February, 1824.

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 55

thousand dollars was appropriated for this
purpose.

Rigid legislation only multiplied the horrors,
without curtailing the evil. With death as the
penalty, when there was danger of apprehension,
it was not uncommon for the whole cargo to be
thrown into the sea. This, compared with the
tortures of frequent passages, was almost humane.
To escape the terrors, numbers would embrace
death if given the opportunity. Yet the trade
was highly profitable even if three out of four
cargoes were lost.

By the Treaty of Ghent (18 15), the United
States and Great Britain agreed separately and
individually to use their influence to suppress
the trade. Yet later the United States threw
sheltering arms around those of her citizens whom
Britain had reason to suspect — maritime rights, the
statement that Southern slave owners might make
voyages accompanied by their slaves, or the plea
of slave hands on merchant ships — often protected
malefactors. After Parliament abolished slavery
from the British colonies, the American brig
Comet was stranded off the Bahamas (1830), as

56 Historic Sketches of the South

was the Encomium in 1834 a* 1 ** the Enterprise in
1835; slaves were found aboard in each case and
liberated by the English. Americans raised a
loud cry. After a correspondence covering nearly
ten years Great Britain agreed to pay for the
Africans, and admonished her colonies on the
southern borders of the United States to "main-
tain good neighborhood." As the years went by
and all so-called efforts proved ineffectual, Eng-
land, with a sincere desire to end the traffic, de-
veloped an assumption that it was her especial
privilege, and inaugurated a right of search, or
visit, against the very nature of which it was
imperative that the United States should protest.
In many cases this necessity became unavoidably
another protection for malefactors. As the flags
of various countries were constantly used to cover
the traffic, England in 1803 united with Russia,
France, Austria, and Prussia for the suppression,
and acquired supervision along the African coast,
maintaining a right of search. America was
not approached on this subject, though Lord
Palmerston boldly declared to the world England's
right to "visit" American merchantmen (Aug. 13,

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 57

1841). This was later sustained by Lord Aber-
deen (Oct. 13, 1841). America's attitude toward
the situation was awaited with great interest by
European Powers. Such an assumption could
not be tolerated — America had already suffered
too much from British assumption— and President
Tyler in his message to Congress protested that
"however desirous the United States may be for
the suppression of the slave trade, they cannot
consent to any interpolations of the maritime code
at the mere will and pleasure of other governments.
We deny the right of any such interpolation to
any one, or all the nations of earth without our
consent. . . . American citizens prosecuting a
lawful commerce on the African seas, under the
flag of their country, are not responsible for the
abuse or unlawful use of that flag by others; nor
can they rightfully, on account of any such alleged
abuses, be interrupted, molested, or detained while
in the ocean; and if thus molested and detained
while pursuing honest voyages in the usual way
and violating no laws themselves, they are un-
questionably entitled to indemnity." 1

1 Right of Search, Daniel Webster.

58 Historic Sketches of the South

Lord Aberdeen in his correspondence with Mr.
Stephenson (Oct. 13, 1841) had admitted that
it would be an infringement of public law, to visit
and search American vessels during times of
peace, if that right were not granted by treaty.
"But no such right is asserted. We sincerely
desire to respect the vessels of the United States,
but we may reasonably expect to know what it is
we respect. Doubtless the flag is prima facie
evidence of nationality of the vessel; and, if this
evidence were in its nature conclusive and irre-
fragible, it ought to preclude all further inquiry.
But it is sufficiently notorious that the flags of all
nations are liable to be assumed by those who have
no right or title to bear them. Mr. Stephenson
himself fully admits the extent to which the
American flag has been employed for the purpose
of covering this infamous traffic. The undersigned
joins with Mr. Stephenson in deeply lamenting
the evil; and he agrees with him in thinking the
United States ought not to be considered respon-
sible for the abuse of their flag. But if all inquiry
be resisted, even when carried no further than to
ascertain the nationality of the vessel, and impu-

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 59

nity be claimed for the most lawless and desperate
of mankind, in the commission of the fraud the
undersigned greatly fears that it may be regarded
as something like an assumption of that re-
sponsibility which has been deprecated by Mr.
Stephenson. . . .

"The undersigned, although with pain, must
add, that if such visit lead to the proof of the
American origin of the vessel, and that she was
avowedly engaged in the trade, exhibiting man-
acles, fetters, and other usual implements of
torture, or had even a number of those unfortu-
nates on board, no British officer could interfere
further. He might give information to the cruisers
of the United States, but it could not be in his
power to arrest or impede the prosecution of the
voyage and the success of the undertaking."

The question called for a diplomatic correspond-
ence. In 1842, Lord Ashburton was sent as
special minister to the United States, empowered
to settle the Northwest Boundary, and other ques-
tions of controversy. The result of his conference
with Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, was a
treaty between Great Britain and the United

60 Historic Sketches of the South

States known as the Ashburton Treaty and as the
Treaty of Washington. By the eighth article
each stipulated to "maintain on the African coast
an adequate squadron, to carry in all not less than
eighty guns, to enforce separately and respectively
the laws, rights, and obligations of the two countries
for the suppression of the slave trade."

There was also the realization that as long as
certain countries offered open markets for slaves,
the temptation to malefactors would be so great
that their efforts would be more or less ineffectual ;
by the ninth article both countries agreed to
"unite in all becoming representations and re-
monstrances with any and all powers within whose
dominions such markets are allowed to exist,"
and that "they will urge upon all such powers
the propriety and duty of closing such markets
effectually, at once and forever."

Americans, among others, continued to brazenly
carry on the trade; as the gap between the North

d the South widened, it was carried on with
renewed vigor. The Abolitionists' thoughts were
focused on conditions in the South, and failed to
note the flourishing trade carried on under their

!caj
lan

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 61

very eyes from the ports of New England and
New York. Inhabitants of these places were
constantly being found implicated, but by lack of
proof, or through some technicality, they were
seldom convicted. Officials, who were either con-
niving or indifferent, aided them in their lucrative
trade. As late as 1858, a brisk trade was carried ")
on; statistics show that in that year eighty-five
slavers were fitted out and sailed from New York
alone, and these successfully captured and sold
into slavery fifteen thousand Africans. Some-
times they were sent into the South. The schooner
Wanderer in the fall of 1858 surreptitiously landed
three hundred at Brunswick, Georgia; they were
taken up the Savannah River and sold. In
October, of the same year, an alleged slave bark,
Isle de Cuba, was taken in custody at Boston, and
her crew held as witnesses under a thousand-
dollar bond; later they and Captain Dobson were
discharged. In November, the schooner Madison
was taken by the United States marshal at New
York. She was intended for the slave trade, was
sold at auction, and bought in for Eddy & Gar-
dener of Salem, Mass., for sixteen hundred dollars.

62 Historic Sketches of the South

Evidence pointed that she was bound for Salem
to be fitted out as a slaver when captured. In
September the Echo was captured by a revenue
cutter and taken to Charleston as the nearest
port; Charleston was very active in her efforts
to restrain the trade. The Echo was commanded
by Captain Townsend of Rhode Island — the queen
of the slave-trading States. The Africans were
cared for at Charleston until the Colonization
Society could take charge of them. They were
the wildest barbarians — men and women were
alike nude, though this was no evidence that they
had been accustomed to going so in their native
land, as their clothes were usually taken from them
by their captors. Some of the charitable ladies
provided clothing for them. Among all these
unfortunates there was but one article of clothing
— a glove — and this was worn with great pride
and distinction by a tall, handsome negress.
Hoop-skirts were then in vogue, and this woman
was dressed by the ladies in full regalia. En-
tranced, she danced and shrieked with delight,
pushing the hoop-skirt on one side to see it stick
out on the other.

Illegal Traffic in Slaves 63

Many violations might be cited. Sometimes
ships reported deserted vessels on the high seas — (
vessels whose manacles and wooden spoons told
a gruesome tragedy. An article in the New York
World, in 1859, described some of the methods by
which the slavers escaped punishment: "The slave
trader takes care to cross the ocean without a
national flag or purpose of any kind. The reason
for this is that if captured, no court can condemn
them for piracy. The vessels may be condemned
and the negroes liberated by the captor, but the
crew can be punished only by the nation under
whose flag the offense was committed. No flag,
the crew escapes." Slavers no longer left America
with manacles, gewgaws, and fire-water, but
carried money. Once on the African coast they
could buy from English or other vessels the articles
needed for trade. The bargain struck, the crew
that made the outward voyage was usually dis-
charged, and a new one of adventurous spirit
procured on the African coast. -< .

Thirteen years after the ratification of the Ash-
burton Treaty, when England made reclamations
on the Brazilian Government for innumerable

64 Historic Sketches of the South

violations of her treaties, the reply of the Emperor
was "if Great Britain would find the real
culprits, she must go to the ports of Boston and
New York to find them." 1

1 Journal de Commercio, Rio, May 26, 1856.

CHAPTER IV

PREPARATIONS FOR CLOTILDE'S VOYAGE

In 1858, Mobile had been for almost a century
and a half one of the important Gulf coast ports.
Picturesquely situated at the head of a lagoon-like
bay, the craft of many nations dropped anchor
in her waters. Somewhat past the heyday of
youth, her buildings mellowed by time and her
streets shaded by trees, she wore an air that was
calm and comfortable, and her homes and public
buildings bespoke a settled prosperity. Survivors
of primitive and pioneer life might be seen about
the streets; some Indians lingered on and with
baskets strapped across their shoulders sold filS
and sassafras about the streets, while white-
covered "Chickasaha" wagons, drawn by from
six to twenty oxen, came slowly and laboriously
down Spring Hill and St. Stephen's roads, bring-
ing staples from the interior to the Mobile markets.

The district near the river and towards the northern
s 65

66 Historic Sketches of the South

part of the town was given over to commerce and
occupied by cotton warehouses — low-lying, monoto-
nous structures of brick. The river boats carried
on a brisk trade and Mobile's export to foreign
countries was large. Life about the wharves
which was usually busy — and often gay — became
very stirring during the latter part of 1858 and
1859. It drew upon itself the attention of the
United States Government, elicited a special
proclamation from the President, and a vigilant
watch by United States officials.

In the early fifties, during one of Nicaragua's
chronic revolutions, General Walker had been
invited by the democrats of Leon to unite with
them against the aristocrats of Granada. Many
Alabamians joined him in this expedition and shed
their blood for the cause. Walker gained supreme
power, but his glory was short-lived. The oppos-
ing forces united and compelled him to leave. In
1857, President Buchanan recognized him as
President of Nicaragua, and addressed him as such.
His adventurous exploit met with general accla-
mation. But when Walker announced that Nica-
ragua would be open to Southern colonization,

Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 67

admitting slaves, it was like flaunting a red rag
before a maddened populace; the abolitionism of
the North, already unrestrained in its fanaticism
and jealous hatred, backed by Northern commer-
cialism caused a rapid reversion of feeling. Walker,
the erstwhile hero, was denounced as a filibuster,
and Southerners were accused of attempting to
establish a Southern Republic along the Gulf of
Mexico that they might spread slavery and reopen
the slave traffic.

In 1858, Walker prepared to make good his
previous claims. The collectors of the ports of
New Orleans and Mobile were ordered not to
clear vessels for Nicaraguan ports, before first
communicating with the Government of Washing-
ton. Vessels carrying passengers and receiving
every protection of the Government still sailed
from Eastern ports to San Juan del Norte. Mobile
and New Orleans felt the trade of the South to
be seriously crippled by this discrimination. In a
special message, the President denounced the
"leaders of former illegal expeditions who had
expressed their intention of open hostilities against
Nicaragua," and particularly against one "who is

68 Historic Sketches of the South

now at Mobile, which has been designated as the
rendezvous and place of departure for San Juan
del Norte." He enjoined all the Government offi-
cers, "civil and military, to be active, vigilant, and
faithful in suppressing these illegal enterprises."
This message was received with indignation
throughout the whole of the lower South. Mobil-
ians gathered in groups about the streets and on
the new post-office steps, and excitedly discussed
the President's proclamation. They were in
sympathy with Walker and many were contri-
buting funds towards the expedition. Espousal
of his cause became an issue in the mayoral
election. Further excitement was generated by
the attitude of Judge Campbell, his charge to the
grand jury, and his emphasis of the President's
order for officials to be "vigilant, active, and faith-
ful." Citizens regarded this as espionage and
as a personal affront to their fellow townsman,
Robert H. Smith, collector of the port. The dis-
covery of a Government spy — one General Wilson
from Ohio — and a minion of Judge Campbell —
who was seen "sneaking about the wharves and
warehouses of the city, to find something contra-

Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 69

band of Abolition interest and Abolition policy,"
provoked the citizens to further anger. "As a
next step we shall have our servants paid to report
the words which drop from us at the table" 1
Rebellion was already rampant in the South.
The temperament of Southern men was unfailingly
daring — adventure appealed to their imaginations
and risk was a game to be played. In the midst
of this excitement, an expedition was preparing,
money was being contributed, and the schooner
Susan fitted out. Harry Maury, socially and
financially prominent, was in command. When
ready to sail she was refused clearing papers, but
Maury weighed anchor and sailed down the bay,
preparatory to joining the fleet. The revenue
cutter McClelland pursued, brought her to, and
boarded her and demanded her papers. Maury
said he did not expect to receive them until he
reached the fleet. The captain of the McClelland
then claimed the Susan as a prize for the Govern-
ment; Maury refused to consider her as such.
Lieutenant White was placed aboard with orders
to take her to Dog River Bar and to hold her there

* Mobile Register, December, 1858.

70 Historic Sketches of the South

as prize. Maury nonchalantly replied that he did
not object to White remaining aboard as his guest.
The next day both vessels sailed about the bay,
but the captain, under orders from the custom-
house at Mobile, warned Maury that if he at-
tempted to sail away the Susan would be stink.
At dark the captain ordered both boats to drop
anchor for the night. About eleven o'clock, a
heavy mist arose, the Susan weighed anchor and
slipped noiselessly away, carrying aboard Lieu-
tenant White. The Mobile Register, voicing the
sentiments of the citizens, wished for the voyage
"that the breezes be prosperous and the fates
propitious." When two hundred miles out in the
Gulf, Lieutenant White was transferred to the
bark Oregon and sent back to New Orleans, where
he stated that he had received every courtesy
while aboard the Susan. He reported that she
carried besides her crew, two hundred and forty
men, Minie balls, and Mississippi rifles. The
Susan was wrecked on a coral reef off Honduras.
The subsequent adventures of her men is a thrilling
narrative. They were received by the governor
of Bay Island, who upon hearing of their predica-

Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 71

ment sent them back to Mobile in Her Majesty's
steam-sloop Basilisk.

With the birth and fruition of such adventures,
Mobile's river-front naturally became an exciting
place. About this time a group of men were one
day standing on the wharf discussing the efforts
the Government was finally making to suppress
the slave trade, the vigilance which was being ex-
erted, and the impossibility for a vessel equipped
for such a purpose to evade officials. There was
some betting — a favorite pastime of the day —
and Captain Tim Meaher, a steamboat builder
and river-man, who was standing near, wagered
that he could send a slaver to the coast of Africa
and bring through the port of Mobile a cargo of
slaves. The wager was taken up and the stakes
were large. This is the tradition which is given
in connection with the Clotilde's voyage. It may
have been true or it may have been invented to give
color and palliation to what proved to be the last
cargo of slaves brought into the United States,
but it is certain that this was only one of the
voyages made under the auspices of the Meahers
and Captain Foster. Of these there are still

72 Historic Sketches of the South

/

rumors among the older people, and the widow
of Captain Foster, innocent and trustful, hoped
until her recent death to get from the United
States about thirty thousand dollars which would
have been Foster's share in the Gipsy — a slaver
which with her cargo was captured by Govern-
ment officials and which was valued by those
interested in her at four hundred thousand dollars.
There were three of the Meaher brothers — Tim,
Jim, and Burns. They were natives of Maine,
and possessed the New England love of the water
and taste for the slave trade. Captain Foster
was born in Nova Scotia of English parentage.
His people were all seafaring — sailors, captains,
and builders of boats — and possibly his proclivities
were also inherited. These men were interested
in a mill and a ship-yard at the mouth of Chickasa-
bogue, three miles above Mobile. The Clotilde,
the Susan, the Gipsy, and other boats which were
engaged in the river trade, in filibustering expedi-
tions, the slave trade, and as blockade-runners
during the Civil War were built there. The
Clotilde, because of her fleetness, was selected to
make the voyage to the slave coast. She was

THE NEW YORK

PUUL1C LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDE*? FOUNDATIONS
It J '■ L

I

Drawn by Emma Roc

Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 73

the personal property of Foster and had been
designed and built by him.

Once arriving on the African coast there was
little trouble in procuring a cargo of slaves, for it
had long been a part of the traders' policy to
instigate the tribes against each other and in this
manner keep the markets stocked. News of the
trade was often published in the papers. The
Meahers and Foster could have sought nothing
more enlightening or to their purpose than an
item published in the Mobile Register, November
9, 1858: "From the west coast of Africa we have
advice dated September 21st. The quarreling of
the tribes on Sierra Leone River rendered the
aspect of things very unsatisfactory. The King
of Dahomey was driving a brisk trade in slaves
at from fifty to sixty dollars apiece at Whydah.
Immense numbers of negroes were collected along
the coast for export." Foster, with a crew of
northern men, sailed directly for Whydah.

CHAPTER V

THE CAPTURE OF THE TARKARS

The slaves who constituted the Clotildas cargo
and who have become historic by being the last
brought into the United States were captured by
Dahomey's warriors and Amazons on one of their
cruel excursions. For many years the tribe of
Dahomey had been a scourge to the weaker and
more peaceable tribes whose domains lay near the
Gold Coast or in the interior away from the coast
of Guinea. Cruel, stealthy war was their occupa-
tion — a war of surprise which aroused sleeping
villages to the horrors of fire, plunder, and capture.
The older victims were usually killed. Sometimes
they were permitted to live and to see their young
and strong overpowered, bound, and led into
captivity, — a captivity from which there could be
no hope of return, for the prisoners were conveyed
to the coast, sold to the slavers, and carried across

the sea to strange, alien lands. The King of

74

The Capture of the Tarkars 75

Dahomey's house was built of skulls and his
drinking cups were the skulls of fallen chiefs. In
the early part of the nineteenth century one of
the Dahomey kings organized a battalion of
women warriors — a race rare in history but not
especially unique in African annals. Early cos-
mographies record of the King of Inhamban : " It is
affirmed that he hath a strong battalion of Ama-
zons, a warlike race of women who inhabit about
the Lake of Zambre, and the outskirts of Zanzibar;
compared by some for their fidelity and prowess to
the Turkish Janizaries " x Like the Greek Ama-
zons those of Inhamban and Dahomey were re-
cruited by incursions upon neighboring tribes.

The Tarkar village was situated many miles
inland. Poleete, one of the old survivors, says it
was "many days from the water," meaning
thereby the sea. They were a peace-loving,
agricultural people, raising hogs, sheep, and cows,
and planting corn, beans, and yams. Their chief
industry was the production of palm oil. Nature
had been lavish — the lands were wonderfully
fertile, requiring little work and no fertilizer; the

1 Heylyn's Cosmographie, 1657.

76 Historic Sketches of the South

fragrance of ripening fruits filled the forests. The
Tarkar dwellings were of superior quality and had
the advantage of withstanding fire. They were
built of mud ; the process of construction has been
described by two of the survivors — Poleete and
Kazoola. First a circular trench was dug and a
wall of mud four feet high and a foot and a half
thick laid; this was left until thoroughly dry.
Another four feet was laid upon this, which was
also left to dry. Then a third layer of four feet
was laid making their dwellings about twelve feet
high. When thoroughly dry, branches were cut,
the roof thatched and covered with mud.

The Tarkars were not without laws, and had a
sort of court of justice over which the King pre-
sided. Each of the old survivors lays especial
stress upon honesty as a tribal characteristic.
Stealing was almost unknown ; all worked and had
what was needed; houses were never locked and
possessions seldom disturbed. All an individual's
wealth "might be hung upon a tree or accidentally
left — others of the tribe knew they had not put it
there — that it was not theirs — so disturbed it not."
14 Suppose I had left my purse in town in the public

The Capture of the Tarkars 77

square. To-day I have not the time to go for it —
nor to-morrow — am I worried? No, for I know
when I go I will find it where I left it. Could you
do that in America?" (Kazoola). As there was
no reason or excuse for stealing, when one among
them committed a theft, it was more through a
spirit of braggadocio. The culprit would be
taken before the King who would say, "You are
strong — you have two arms to work — you suffer
for nothing — why have you stolen?" The de-
fendant would be imprisoned, and the Tarkars say
that if he lived to get out he would steal no more.
Death was always meted to the murderer — rank
having no weight with justice. Poleete explained
that if the King's son committed murder, death
would fall to him as to the commoner. "Money
don't plea you there " (Poleete). The manner of
execution was decapitation — the implement a
sword. To illustrate the inexorable nature of
their laws, the following was narrated by Kazoola :
41 The Law in Tarkar. If it would be my son. He
kills a man. I have money — I want to buy my
son. I go before the King, and say ' Oh, King, my
son has killed, but I have money.' The King

78 Historic Sketches of the South

would reply, ' Here is the Law, read. ' I read and
say, 'Yes, King, the Law says Death/ And the
King would answer, 'That is the Law, and I am
the King. Shut your eyes, give up your son —
money cannot buy.' "

The Tarkars were polygamists, sometimes hav-
ing as many as three wives, but never any more.
The conditions of life were so easy they could
afford the luxury. There was no need to support
the wives, for the women had the same amount of
property as the men and did the same work.
Jealousy among the wives was unknown ; the first
wife selected the second and the second the third,
etc. This custom has been lucidly explained by
Kazoola and Olouala. ' ' Kazoola has been married
about three years. His wife says, ' Kazoola, I am
growing old — I am tired — I will bring you another
wife. ' Before speaking thus, she has already one
in mind — some maid who attracts her and who
Kazoola has possibly never seen. The wife goes
out and finds the maid — possibly in the market-
place — and asks, 'You know Kazoola?' The
maid answers, 'I have heard of him/ The wife
then says, ' Kazoola is good — he is kind — I would

IT5LM;" IXBABY

1 1 L

A bach e and Kazuola.

The Capture of the Tarkars 79

like you to be his wife. ' The maid answers, ' Come
with me to my parents.' They go together;
questions are exchanged and if these are satis-
factory, the parents say, ' We give our girl into your
keeping — she is ours no more — be good to her.'"
The wife and the maid return together to Kazoola's
house. The wife introduces the maid to Kazoola,
shows her how to look after things as she has done,
then sits down to take her days of rest and works
no more. The relation of the husband to the
wives was that of protector. Once married, a
man dared not look upon women other than his
wives, for the punishment was very great. To
justify their native custom of polygamy, the
Christianized Tarkars now cite the example of
David and Solomon.

They believed in the spirits of departed relatives ;
to these the "day was as night and the night as
the day." To these spirits their actions were
known. The Tarkars also possessed dualistic
ideas of a future life. There was a Spirit of Good —
Ahla-ahra, to whom by doing right their actual,
daily life would be something of a consecration;
and there was a Spirit of Evil — Ahla-bady-oleelay.

80 Historic Sketches of the South

"Do right and you will go to Ahla-ahra; do
wrong, you go to Ahla-bady-oleelay." While not
exactly Nature-worshipers, they were Nature-
fearers; they did not propitiate by prayer or any
kind of ceremonial these Spirits of Good and Evil,
but believed their powers were manifested in the
wind, the cloud that covered the sun, and in the
thunder and the lightning. Before these last
the Tarkars trembled, and were filled with
fear; they would cross their arms over their
breasts and cowering, cry out, "We will be
good!"

"In Africa different places, like Mobile, Mont-
gomery, New Orleans — each have a different tribe
speaking a different language. Suppose the tribe
at New Orleans comes to the one at Mobile and
says, 'You have fruit and corn and cattle — you
must give me half.' You at Mobile say, 'No,
go back and raise your own cattle and corn.'
And they say, 'If you do not give us cattle and
corn, we will make war on you.' They go back
to their own country and talk among themselves.
4 You know that tribe at Mobile. We demanded
half their crops and cattle — they refused; we will

The Capture of the Tarkars 81

make war upon them. But they have strong sol-
diers. We will go through the country, surround
the village at the break of day. ' " l Thus did the
Dahomeyans plan their attack upon the Tarkars.
One morning just at the break of day, the fiends of
Dahomey — and the female warriors were the most
cruel — broke upon the unsuspecting Tarkars.
Some of the men were already astir and had gone
into the fields to work while the day was yet cool.
These were all killed; had one escaped he would
have aroused the sleeping village, and the women
and small children might have made their escape.
They were aroused from slumber and in a few
minutes death or captivity was upon them; even
the infants were torn from their mothers' breasts
and carried away. Those who were not killed
were overpowered. Dahomey's Amazons van-
quished the most stalwart men and bound them
as captives. The Tarkars relate that in their
paint and war clothes Dahomey's women soldiers
could not be distinguished from the men. The
Dahomeyans cut off the heads of their dead victims,
leaving the bodies where they had fallen. The

s Narrative of Kazoola.

82 Historic Sketches of the South

heads were to be taken home as evidence of in-
dividual valor and as trophies to be hung on the
Dahomey huts. Human faces could express no
more anguish than those of the old Tarkars when
they speak of this awful experience. One of the
trials and tragedies of their march to the coast was
the dangling heads of their relatives and friends.
When these grew offensive the Dahomeyans
stopped the march that they might smoke the
heads. As they passed near one of Dahomey's vil-
lages, at a curve in the big road, they caught sight of
fresh heads raised on poles above the huts and of
skulls, grinning white. With the captives there
were some people of other tribes — friends who had
been visiting in the Tarkar village — Tarkbar,
Goombardi, Filanee, and Ejasha. (These tribal
names are spelled as pronounced by the surviving
Tarkars.) Kazoola has drawn a map of the route
taken by Dahomey and of the march to the sea,
which he claims any of his tribe would recognize.
The towns they passed through on their march
to the sea were Eko, Budigree (Badragy?), Adach6,
and Whydah. This last the Tarkars sometimes
call Gr6f 6. There they remember a white house

The Capture of the Tarkars 83

on the river-bank; behind this was a stockade
wherein they were held prisoners about three
weeks, at the end of which time Captain Foster
came.

CHAPTER VI

THE VOYAGE

Captain Foster boarded at the Vanderslice
home (afterwards marrying one of the daughters)
in the Meaher settlement. This was about three
miles from Mobile and a mile from the ship-yard
at the mouth of Chickasabogue. When starting
for Africa, he left home by night, slung his bag
of gold across his shoulder, and went alone through
the woods to the river where the Clotilde lay. He
pulled out a part of the cabin bulk-head and con-
cealed his gold behind it. He then picked up his
crew, got under way, and passed out of the Gulf of
Mexico without incident or mishap. When on
the Atlantic he was alarmed to find by the stars
that the Clotilde was drifting out of her course.
He knew no cause, and she continued to drift.
One night he lay on his bunk, sleepless and wonder-
ing. Like an inspiration the thought came that

the hidden gold was too near the compass. He

84

The Voyage 85

arose, moved the gold, and the needle swung into
position. A terrific hurricane blew him to the
Cape Verde Islands, where he had to stop for
repairs. The crew mutinied. They threatened
that if he did not promise more pay, they would
inform the officials of the purpose of his voyage.
Foster did not hesitate to comply, for promises
cost nothing and he sometimes f ound it unneces-
sary to keep them. His wife in relating this inci-
dent remarked that the captain had always said
that "promises were like pie-crust — made to be
broken." He made friends with the Portuguese
officials and the United States Consul, and as a
part of his policy presented handsome shawls and
ornaments to their wives. These had been bought
in Mobile and stowed away to be used in such
emergencies. No questions were asked Foster.
The repairs finished, he sailed away. He arrived
safely in the Gulf of Guinea and had to anchor
more than a mile out and be taken ashore in a
small boat which was built to cut through the
surf. When about to pass through a breaker, a
warning would be given to Foster to hold his nose.
On reaching shore he was placed in a hammock

86 Historic Sketches of the South

and conveyed by six stalwart blacks to the
presence of a prince of Dahomey — a great, stout
black, weighing over three hundred pounds.
This prince was hospitable in his attentions and
entertained Foster with the sights of Whydah.
One which he did not relish was a large square
enclosure in which were thousands of snakes.
Walking among these creatures was both trying
and disgusting. They were kept for religious
ceremonials.

This prince wished to make a present to Foster,
so asked him to select for himself a native — one
that the "superior wisdom and exalted taste"
of Foster designated the finest specimen. Gumpa
was his choice, Foster making this selection with
the intention of flattering the prince to whom
Gumpa was nearly related. This accounts for
the presence of one of Dahomey's tribe in the
African settlement near Mobile. He became
known as African Peter and was a conspicuous
figure in the life of the settlement. He used to
tell his story in the simple phrase, "My people
sold me and your people bought me."

After many hospitalities, Foster was taken to

The Voyage 87

the stockade where the Tarkars were imprisoned.
They were placed in circles composed of ten men
or ten women, Foster standing in the middle.
This was another trial for the unfortunates, and
Kazoola says, in language which any one could
understand, " He looka, an' looka, an' looka. Then
he point to one." The one indicated would be
taken out of the circle and placed to one side ; then
Foster would point to another, who would be
placed with the one already selected. Foster
picked out one hundred and thirty, after which
he got into the hammock and was conveyed across
the river to the beach. Behind him marched the
Tarkars, chained one behind the other. They
had to wade, the water coming up to their necks.
On the beach they had their first view of the sea,
and the realization that they had to go out into
it was another horror. They wore clothes made
of cotton — the same they had worn when captured
— but as they stepped into the small boats which
were to take them to the Clotilde, the Dahomeyans,
always vicious and avaricious, tore their garments
from them, saying "You go where you can get
plenty of clothes." Men and women alike were

88 Historic Sketches of the South

left entirely nude, and this fact is still a humilia-
tion to the Tarkars. They regard the accusations
of some American negroes that they were a naked
people as a great indignity.

As the Tarkars were taken aboard the Clo tilde,
they were put into the hole. In this respect the
Clotilde was better equipped than most slavers;
the usual space in which the "middle passage"
was made was from two and a half to three feet
in height, and the miserable captives were stowed
away much as sardines are packed in cans, without
even room to sit up. The hole of the Clotilde was
deep enough to permit of the men of lesser stature
to stand erect. The top of the hole was shut
down and the Tarkars were left in darkness to
grieve and wonder.

When a hundred and sixteen had been brought
aboard, Foster went up into the rigging with his
glasses to look about the harbor. He saw that
all of Dahomey's vessels were flying black flags.
He hurried down and gave orders to leave all
slaves who were not yet aboard ; to weigh anchor
and to get immediately under way. The treacher-
ous Dahomeyans dealt also in piracy, and were

THE NEW YGBK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTCR, LEX«X AND
T1UCN FOLIATIONS
K 1 L

Map Drawn by Kazoola.

(/) Tarkar Village. (2) Dahomey's Land, (j) Wavering line

showing stealthy march of Dahomeyans through forest.

(4) Route by which captive Tarkars were taken to

the sea. (5), (6), (7), (8), Eko, Budigree,

Adach£, Whydah, towns through which

Tarkars passed. (p) River. (10)

Beach and sea.

The Voyage 89

making ready to bear down upon the Clotilde,
recapture the slaves, and take Foster and the crew
prisoners. The Clotilde made her escape. When
out some miles, the Clotilde was sighted by an
English cruiser. The slaver was a small craft,
and Foster by using a favorite tactic — an elusive
tacking — evaded the English. Once in the wake
of the trade-winds the Clotilde sailed towards
her destination at a lively speed.

At the end of the thirteenth day the Africans
were removed from their close, dark quarters.
Their limbs were so cramped and numbed they
refused to obey their wills, so they were supported
by some of the crew and walked around the deck
until the use of their limbs returned. Tottering
on deck, to their astonished, terror-stricken eyes
the sea stretched all around them: "We looka, an'
looka, an' looka — nothin' but sky and water.
Whar we com' from, we do not know — whar we
go, we do not know" (Kazoola). One day they
saw islands. The Tarkars say that on the twen-
tieth day, Foster seemed uneasy; that he always
had his glasses to his eyes; that he climbed the
mast, and looked for a long time; then he came

90 Historic Sketches of the South

hurriedly down, ordered the sails down, threw out
the anchors, and ordered the Tarkars back into
the hole. Thus the Clotilde lay until night.

The Tarkars were naturally close observers;
during the voyage they seem to have been parti-
cularly alert. They noted the varying colors of
the sea — how at first it was blue, then green and
how they passed through water that seemed
blood-red. Foster was kind to them. They
could eat the food — hunger makes anything
palatable. Though their mental anguish was
great, they suffered physically only for water.
About a gill was given them at morning and at
evening, and this tasted of vinegar. During
such voyages, it was necessary that the water be
conserved. Their only relief came when they
caught rain in their parched hands and mouths.

When the Clotilde sailed into American waters,
the Africans were put into the hole — there to
remain until relief came in capture or a successful
landing. Three days before they landed, when
the Clotilde lay waiting behind the islands in
Mississippi Sound and near the lower end of
Mobile Bay, a bunch of green boughs was brought

The Voyage 91

to them to show that the voyage was almost at an
end.

To make the hiding more secure, the Clotilde
was dismasted. Then Foster got into a small
boat, rowed by four sailors to go to the western
shore of Mobile Bay, intending to send word to
Meaher that the Clotilde had arrived. His ap-
proach was regarded with suspicion by some men
ashore, and he was fired upon. Waving a white
handkerchief their doubts were allayed and he
offered fifty dollars for a conveyance which would
take him to Mobile.

CHAPTER VII

THE RETURN

The time of waiting had been an anxious one.

The Meahers realized the risk. There had always

been some, but during the absence of the Clotilde

great agitation had become rife throughout the

country, and one of the things the Government

had at last undertaken to do was to wipe out at

once and forever the illegal traffic in slaves. The

destination and purpose of the Clotilde had been

noised about, and Meaher realized that officials

were watching his movements. Aside from the

Clotilde } s capture, he had little to fear, for every

vestige of the conservatism which had so long

held in restraint the abolitionism of the North

and the temper of the South had disappeared ; the

two sections had drifted so far apart as to be

virtually two countries; war clouds were looming

large upon the horizon and differences had gone so

far there could be no reconciliation. Garrison's

92

The Return 93

voice was ringing through the North characterizing
Southerners as "thieves and robbers, men-stealers,
and women-whippers " and calling loudly, "how
can two walk together, except they agree? The
slaveholder with his hands dripping in blood —
will I make a compact with him? The man who
plunders cradles — will I say to him 'Brother, let
us walk together in unity?' The man who to
gratify his lust or his anger, scourges women with
the lash till the soil is red with blood — will I say
to him, ' Give me your hand ; let us form a glorious
union?' " Charges which were as a scourge to
Southerners; goaded and angered, many began to
talk of reopening the slave traffic. The question
was agitated in Congress — a number of papers
advocating it, not all of which were of the South.
The New York Day Book, May 17, 1859, came out
strongly for it. "Of course no one can suppose
we doubt the right of bringing negroes from Africa
if they are needed. It is simply a question of
expediency, and there can be no doubt our laws
making it piracy must be blotted out of the Statute
Books. They are not only ridiculous, but utterly
and wholly contemptible," etc. From the point

94 Historic Sketches of the South

of view of a large class of Southerners these argu-
ments were not fallacious. Yet they were retro-
gressive and their revival put the South out of
harmony with ethical and intellectual progress,
and defeated the hopes of those of larger vision.
Early in 1859 the Mobile papers lent their support
to the question. Mobilians, like all of the South,
were tried to their utmost, and Meaher knew if
all due secrecy was observed, he had little to fear
from them.

Captain Foster reached Mobile on a Sunday
morning in August (1859) with the secret that the
Clotilde lay behind the islands in Mississippi Sound.
Arrangements had long been made that a tug
should lie in readiness to go at a moment's notice
down Mobile Bay to tow the Clotilde and her
cargo to safety. When the news came, the tug's
pilot was attending service at St. John's Church.
Captain Jim Meaher and James Denaison — a
negro slave — hurried to the church. Dennison
remained outside while Meaher went in to call
the pilot. The three hastened down to the wharf,
and were soon aboard the tug Billy Jones, steaming
rapidly down the bay. Late afternoon found

The Return 95

them nearing the CI tilde, but they waited for
the darkness. The most dangerous part of the
adventure was still ahead — the trip up Mobile
Bay. At the mouth the marshes and islands offered
protection; if they could once reach the delta of
the Mobile River, with its desolate stretches of
marsh, its deep rivers and intricate bayous, safety
was almost assured. But the bay lay smilingly
open between two long arms of land. Her won-
derful beauty under the gorgeous August sunset
was lost upon the watchers ; they prayed for the
light to fade and for mysterious night with its
enshrouding darkness. At last as if loath to die,
the color was gone; sea and sky melted together
into almost impenetrable grayness. They ceased
their vigils and fell to a quick activity; lines were
thrown, the Clotilde made fast, and the trip up the
bay was begun. Her wooded shores had echoed the
voices of many peoples and the sounds from many
craft, but never any more epoch-making — those
from the last slave ship — the voyage nearing its
finish which ended forever among Anglo-Saxon
people the darkest blot upon their civilization.
The chugging sound of the tug's machinery filled

96 Historic Sketches of the South

the Tarkars with terrified wonder; at last they
concluded that it was the swarming of bees.

Time was precious and the darkness doubly
so ; much was still to be done before day with its
light should come. These hours might mean life
or death. The trip up the bay was safely made.
The tug avoided the Mobile River channel,
slipped behind the light-house on Battery Gladden,
into Spanish River. This lay in the midst of the
marsh and with its circuitous windings was not
more than ten miles long. As the ClotUde passed
opposite Mobile the clock in the old Spanish tower
struck eleven, and the watchman's voice floated
over the city and across the marshes, "Eleven
o'clock and all 's well."

The ClotUde was taken directly to Twelve-Mile
Island — a lonely, weird place by night. There
the R. B. Tainey 1 waited; lights were smothered,
and in the darkness quickly and quietly the

1 The R. B. Tainey was owned by the Meahers, and is described
in advertisements of that time as a " new, elegant, and light-weight
summer packet; Captain Jim Meaner. Side- wheeler, drawing
eight inches of water with elegant and spacious staterooms and
large well-ventilated cabins, carrying one hundred and fifty
passengers." She had been named for Chief Justice Tainey
who had handed down the famous Dred Scott decision.

E

" f

The Return 97

Clo tilde's cargo of one hundred and sixteen negroes
was transferred to the steamboat, taken up the
Alabama River to John Dabney's plantation
below Mount Vernon and not far from the shadow
of the fort, where they were landed before noon
of the next day.

At Twelve-Mile Island the crew of Northern
sailors again mutinied. Captain Foster, with a
six shooter in each hand, went among them, dis-
charged them, and ordered them to "hit the grit
and never be seen in Southern waters again."
They were placed aboard the tug. Meaher
bought tickets and saw that they boarded a train
for the North. The Clotilde was scuttled and
fired, Captain Foster himself placed seven cords
of light wood upon her. Her hull still lies in the
marsh at the mouth of Bayou Corne and may be
seen at low tide. Foster afterwards regretted her
destruction as she was worth more than the ten
Africans given him by the Meahers as his booty.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TARKARS AT DABNEY'S PLANTATION

Dabney's plantation lay in the cane brake
country — a part of the river region, so-called from
the miles of towering cane. It was a wilderness,
every part strangely alike, in which even those
most familiar with it could be easily lost. Here,
according to the narrative of James Dennison,
the slave who was left in charge and who afterwards
married Kanko — one of their number — and of the
surviving Tarkars, they were kept for eleven days,
but in a state of constant change, being trans-
ferred each day from one part of the swamp to
another. They were allowed to speak only in
whispers, for there was a chance that some one
passing on the river might hear strange voices.
At the end of the eleventh day clothes were brought
to them and they were put aboard the steamer

Commodore and carried to The Bend in Clark

98

The Tarkars at Dabney's Plantation 99

County, where the Alabama and Tombigbee
rivers meet and where Burns Meaher had a plan-
tation.

There they were lodged each night under a wagon
shed, and driven each morning before daybreak
back into the swamp, where they remained until
dark. Understanding no word and knowing not
what was expected of them, they were made to
know the driver's wishes by a shooing sound —
such as would drive chickens or geese. In
this strange land, among strange faces and an
unknown tongue, the Tarkars say that at first
they almost grieved themselves to death.

Meaher sent word secretly to those disposed
to buy. They were piloted to the place of con-
cealment by Jim Dennison. The Africans were
placed in two long rows, the women on one side
and the men on the other — the buyers standing
between, and carefully examining them — even
looking at their teeth. Those selected would be
put to one side, and when the purchaser was ready
to depart, he would make his ownership known to
them by waving his hand around the group selected,
then bringing it to his breast. The Tarkars could

OT3srre&

ioo Historic Sketches of the South

not understand these transactions — they only knew
their numbers were gradually growing less. Day
after day they saw some of their kinsmen or
comrades led away — to what fate they knew not.
Some were sold and taken to Selma. Of their
march through the woods one pathetic and pic-
turesque incident has come to me. As they
marched through the strange land — tired, de-
jected, friendless — knowing not where they were
going or what would be their destiny — a circus,
moving from place to place, chanced to pass along
the country road. To avoid danger or suspicion,
the Africans were concealed behind the bushes
with their backs to the passing show. As it
passed, one of the elephants trumpeted; joy
transformed the Tarkars, spread over their fea-
tures, and ran through their limbs. To them the
sound was as a cry from home, and as with one
voice, gesticulating, tears streaming from their
eyes, they shouted: "E16, E16! Argenacou, Ar-
genacou ! " (" Home, Home ! Elephant, Elephant !")
Of this small band — two still live — a man and wife
— and those of the tribe near Mobile still receive
news of them now and then.

The Tarkars at Dabney's Plantation 101

As time passed and the Tarkars continued
inconsolable, Captain Tim Meaher recommended
that they be put to some kind of work. They
look back upon this as the first happy episode of
their life in the new land. When they were taken
into the fields for the first time, their astonishment
was very great when they saw civilization's agri-
cultural methods. "We astonish to see the mule
behind the plow to pull" (Kazoola). The con-
trast in fertility made them feel that the American
soil was accursed and their own blessed. There
they had but to scratch the top soil and whatever
they planted grew; but in America there was
nothing but "work, work, work." The Tarkar
would stand for no mistreatment. Once an over-
seer attempted something which the women con-
sidered as such and he was overpowered by them
and given a sound thrashing. Naturally of agri-
cultural and industrious habits they soon came
to understand Southern crops and were very
successful in raising corn, cotton, beans, peas, cane,
pumpkins, etc. This experience was of great
advantage to them when they were afterwards
thrown upon their own resources. Their homes

102 Historic Sketches of the South

to-day axe characterized by excellent gardens and
many varieties of fruit trees.

After war was declared there was little danger
of exposure, and the Africans belonging to Foster,
to Jim and Tim Meaher were taken to the Meaher
settlement, at what is known to-day as Magazine
Point, where they were kindly treated by their
respective owners. Those left at Burns Meaher's
plantation tell of great hardship. When they
first arrived they were given one pair of shoes and
never any more. Before daybreak they were
sent to the fields to work and kept hard at it until
night, when they returned home by torchlight.
After the surrender, these joined the others of
their tribe at Magazine Point.

THK NEW YOHK

VVIMU: LMJ11ARY

AKTutt, LKMIX AND

til:«;:> fwi-ndatiuns

£ 1 L

Wreck of the " Clotilde."

CHAPTER IX

TARKAR LIFE IN AMERICA

Magazine Point — the site of Meaher's mill
and ship-yard — though but three miles from
Mobile, was inaccessible, except by water or a
circuitous route of some miles by land. Between
the two places lay an impenetrable swamp and
forest. Red clay hills rolled away from the north-
ern border of this jungle, diversifying the strip of
country between Three Mile Creek and Chickasa-
bogue. This extensive area was known as Meaher's
hummock and was thickly wooded by a suburb
forest of native trees — pine, cypress, bays, magno-
lias, beech, junipers, gums, and oaks. These had
sheltered the goings and comings of many peoples.
This place had been beloved by the Indians; some
still lingered on among what the Tarkars called the
"high trees," living in their pine-bark tepees.
During the Spanish r6gime it had been included in

the grant of land known as the St. Louis tract,

103

104 Historic Sketches of the South

and Dr. Charles Mohr points out in his Plant Life
in Alabama that it must have been a feeding place
for migratory birds, for tropical plants are found
there which are not known to other parts of the
coast. Near the mouth of Chickasabogue, over-
looking the river, there is a prehistoric shell-mound,
overgrown by patriarchal live-oaks, hundreds of
years old, and on this the Tarkars had their first
dwellings. Much has been told and written by
casual visitors of the queer rites and superstitions
of "Africa-Town" — the little cluster of huts
which have long since been abandoned — none of
which is substantiated by fact or by the actual
knowledge of those who have known and appreci-
ated the Tarkars. But nothing has been told of
the other superstitions with which this region
fairly reeks.

Until the saw-mills became so active there were
old beeches near Chickasabogue and Hog Bayou,
bearing seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nine-
teenth century dates and curious signs which
substantiated the belief of the credulous and im-
aginative that through this district there was much
hidden treasure — treasure buried by early adven-

Tarkar Life in America 105

turers, by the pirates, and in later times by mem-
bers of the Copeland gang — and safely guarded by
the spirits of those who had concealed it. Though
this tract is now largely cleared and settled, these
traditions and ghost stories are still told and
believed by the negroes, Creoles, and ignorant
whites. Poinquinette, an old Creole fisherman and
a repository of interesting lore, has related some
of his personal encounters with the Magazine
Point ghosts, and so real are they to him, and
so vivid his narrative, that his listeners are thrilled
with a sort of belief. By a dream it was once made
known to him and several companions (Nelson,
Sales, Moody, Ebernezar Fisher, and a man named
Robinson) that there was a treasure buried just
below Turner & Oats's mill. The spot was
thickly wooded — high trees and low shrubs — yet
not so dense that they could not see about them —
even a bird was visible as it flew through the brush.
They went early one Friday morning and began
digging at seven o'clock. Almost as soon as their
spades touched the earth, the woods began to re-
sound with voices — child voices — and they won-
dered where children's voices could come from,

106 Historic Sketches of the South

but went on with their digging. As the excavation
progressed, the sounds came nearer — there were
calling and crying and hissing — until finally the
voices were right at them and surrounding them.
They could hear the voices but could see nothing.
Then the voices passed by them with a whirr
and back again into the bushes where they
were still heard. By this time the hole was
some ten feet deep. Nelson Sales, who had
had more experience with spirits than the others,
offered to go back into the woods and talk to
the voices. He was confronted by a fearful
apparition — a great blue bull with eyes of fire
and a tail as large as a hogshead. It dashed
passed him, charged across the hole, and as it
went over threw all the earth back, completely
filling the excavation. They were all thoroughly
frightened and would not go back until they could
get the negress Clara Randall, from Charleston.
Poinquinette was loud in his praises of this woman,
who could see and talk to spirits and was not afraid
of them.

She built a tent and camped alone for three days
and nights at the scene of their labor. She set a

Tarkar life in America 107

table, provided with milk from a white cow, wine,
and honey — inveigling the invisible ones and
tempting them by food to give up the secret of the
buried treasure. At the end of the third day her
persuasions prevailed, and the spirits reluctantly
made known the place. Next morning she walked
to the spot and placed her foot where the men
should dig. They fell to work and had not dug
more than twenty minutes, before the top of
the treasure-box was uncovered. They rapidly
cleared the earth from around it and there lay
before their eager wondering eyes a cedar chest
which measured five feet in length, two and a half
feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. It con-
tained three hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in gold, and Ebernezar Fisher, over-zealous and
over-anxious, bored two holes in it with an auger.
While he was boring the second, the woman warned
him to stop — that the spirits were regretting their
revelation — but Ebernezar, who was of stubborn
temperament, bored on unheedful of her warning.
It was a bright day — not a cloud in the sky — the
sunlight filtered through the trees and fell in
strong beams upon the auger. The other men,

108 Historic Sketches of the South

standing to one side, watched it glinting on the
steel. Again the woman warned Fisher, and as
she spoke his arm was wrenched from the auger.
Almost at the same instant a black cloud swept
across the sky, an awful gust of wind bent the
great trees until they looked as if they would
break, a crash of thunder and a blinding flash of
lightning and the box disappeared! Then all
was clear and bright again. It was a spirit storm
— purely local, and seen only by the searchers
after treasure. "Then all of us had to come away
like sick cats and with aching hearts, because we
hated to see a treasure like that disappear. It 's
there somewhere to-day — and wherever it is,
Ebernezar Fisher's auger is still sticking in it."

Another time they received intimation that
they should go to Meaher's hummock and hunt a
mound and some trees bearing marks like an
inverted E; then walk so many feet in a certain
direction and dig. On this occasion they took
old Adam Boone, a negro who was supposed to
have found many hidden treasures. They found
the marked trees and the mound, which was six
or seven feet high and looked as if it had been

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Tarkar Life in America 109

built by man. They had just arrived, identified
the spot, and were grouped around it talking.
Ebernezar Fisher, who was tall, stood with the
butt of his gun resting on the ground, and held it
with one hand near the end of the barrel. Both
hammers were down. Old Adam Smith was say-
ing, "I Ve been hearin' of this place a long time.
They say several men were killed and buried here."
As the last words were uttered, one barrel of
Fisher's gun went off, and he was so startled that
he threw it from him ; Charlie Tell who was sitting
on the ground near him caught it and as he did so
the other barrel went off. Needless to add that
the seekers for gold left the spot as quickly as they
could and have never gone back again.

There are places in the woods and among the
hills where no one can go — unless very brave and
then not to stay long — for there are sounds as of
the march of soldiers, the clank of their swords, and
the orders of the captains. Whoever goes to these
places will have to fight the spirits and there is no
hope of overpowering them, for they change their
forms into those of many ' ' varmints ' ' and especially
do they affect the ones that the intruder most fears.

no Historic Sketches of the South

Some of these superstitions were repeated to
the Tarkars with the hope of drawing them out
and learning just what they believed. They
accepted them and Olouala offered the solution
of the spirits' faithful guardianship as it had been
explained to him by American negroes. To make
this guardianship effective the promise must be
obtained during the life of the body. "Suppose
some one has a treasure he wishes to conceal —
perhaps to bury. He may pick out you who he
has never seen before. Perhaps he asks, ' Do you
want to earn ten dollars?' Of course you do, so
you go with him. After he gets to the place where
he wishes to bury the gold, he says, 'I have a
treasure here which I wish to bury. But I have
to go away — will you promise to watch it until I
come back?' You unsuspectingly promise and
as you do so you are killed and your body buried
with the treasure that your spirit may guard it
forever." Instead of a person a faithful and
intelligent dog or horse may be sacrificed. This,
however, is not a Tarkar superstition, but is com-
mon to our negro and Creole population. The
Tarkars during their long residence have explored

Tarkar Life in America in

every foot of this region in their searches for game,
berries, fruits, and herbs and they have never had
any encounters with the Magazine Point ghosts
or any intimation of their presence. Kazoola,
however, naively intimated that he would prefer
not to know where they were located, as he might
have occasion to go to these places, and if he did
not know where these ghosts were supposed to be,
he would not be annoyed or frightened by seeing
them.

The life of the Tarkars in America has not been
characterized by the superstitions ascribed to
them; instead their history has been one of hard
work, cooperation, self-sacrifice, and a deep long-
ing for home. Their progress has been deeply
interesting. Almost entirely cut off from white
influence — and that with which they came in
contact during their early years in this country
could scarcely inspire them with confidence, for
they are keenly watchful and observed the ad-
vantage which one white took over another — yet
protected by our laws, they have worked out their
destiny with much more success and honor to
themselves than the generality of American-born

ii2 Historic Sketches of the South

negroes or of the free blacks who were carried by
the American Colonization Society back to Africa,
and whose interests have been guarded and fur-
thered by philanthropists.

When the Tarkars first came to Magazine Point
all days were alike to them ; they went about doing
on Sundays as on other days. Some American
negroes who had become interested in them and
who were really their friends requested them not
to work on Sundays but to gather all their women
and children and go with them. They were thus
introduced to a church. There they were told
that the God who lived in the sky had sent a book
to the people of the earth, telling them how they
must live. Simple and believing, they readily
accepted what was told. The Old Testament and
the dualistic dogma of a God and a Devil made the
same appeal to them that it had to the American
negro — there was the ready response of the primi-
tive imagination to a primitive story. In them
they found an amplification of the gropings of their
own minds into the spiritual. It soothed their
sorrows and gave them hope. Their faith became
a simple one, and that of the few old survivors is

Tarkar Life in America 113

one of resignation, hope, and a perfect trust. Po-
leete has said: "We know not why these troubles
came upon us, but we are all God's children —
we not always see the way, but his hands guide us
and shape our ends/' Kazoola, in speaking of the
death of his wife and of all his children, likened
God to the doctor who " gives us bad medicine — it 's
hard to swallow, but the doctor gives it to us to
do us good. We don't understand why." Though
Kazoola has an intense longing for home, he
regards his advent to America as a part of the
goodness of God and enjoys telling how after
Foster had bought him at Whydah, he was stolen
by one of Dahomey's men and hidden under the
white house. While concealed, he heard the surf
upon the beach. Urged by an innate curiosity
about the mechanism of things, he stole from his
hiding-place and climbed upon the stockade fence ;
" I hear the noise of the sea on shore, an' I wanta
see what maka dat noise, an' how dat water
worka — how it fell on shore an' went back again.
I saw some of my people in a little boat and I holler
to them. Then Captain Foster spied me, an' he
say, 4 Oh hee ! Oh hee ! ' an' pulla me down. An*

8

ii4 Historic Sketches of the South

I was the last to go. Supposy I been lef behind
— what become of Kazoola? Or supposy de ship
turna over, an' de sharks eat us. Oh Lor' ! God
is good!"

Mrs. Foster, who always lived near the Tarkars,
said they have always been gentle, amiable, and
honest and much better than the average American
negro ; that it was their perseverance and religious
zeal which built the several churches which are
now at Magazine Point. There was only one
among them who proved unregenerate — old Zooma
who still lives — but she belonged to another tribe,
the Tarkbar, and presents totally different
characteristics; also different color, physical de-
velopment, and tribal marks. She has been seen
to make a cross and spit in the middle of it. The
others do not seem to understand her motive.

After the surrender the Tarkars wished to go
back to their own country but had no money.
They concluded to save. They worked in the
mills for a dollar a day, but could not save without
help, so they said to their wives, "Now we want
to go home and it takes a lot of money. You
must help us save. You see fine clothes — you

Tarkar Life in America 115

must not crave them." The wives promised and
replied: " You see fine clothes and new hats — now
don't you crave them either. We will work to-
gether." They made six dollars a week. Of this
they could save two dollars, sometimes three,
but they had rent to pay and found they could
not get ahead that way, for it would take a lot of
money to get home. Among themselves they
talked over the injustice of their position — how
Meaher had brought them from their native land
and how they now had neither home nor country.
Kazoola, who seems to have always been a spokes-
man, concluded he would present their case to
Meaher. Soon after he was cutting timber (just
back of where the schoolhouse now stands),
Captain Tim Meaher came along and sat upon a
felled tree. Kazoola recognized this to be his
opportunity, stopped work, and stood looking at
Meaher, all his emotion speaking through his
expressive face. The captain looked up from
the stick he was whittling and struck by the
sorrow in the man's face asked :

"Kazoola, what makes you so sad?"

"I grieve for my home."

1 16 Historic Sketches of the South

4 'But you 've got a good home."

"Captain Tim, how big is Mobile?"

11 1 don't know, I've never been to the four
corners."

"If you give Kazoola all Mobile, that railroad,
and the banks of Mobile Kazoola does not want
them for this is not home."

When the old man tells this his face reflects
overwhelming grief — in his eyes there is the far-
away vision of home, and in a low voice he moans,
14 Oh Lor' ! Oh Lor' ! " Then he regains himself
and goes on with his narrative.

41 Captain Tim, you brought us from our country
where we had land and home. You made us
slaves. Now we are free, without country, land,
or home. Why don't you give us a piece of this
land and let us build for ourselves an African
Town?"

Kazoola relates Meaher 's reply very dramatically.

<4 Thou fool! Thinkest thou I will give you
property upon property? You do not belong to
me now!"

The Tarkars concluded to buy. When one
reached this conclusion, the others said: 4< If you

IIM *

TilK NI-W YoaK
PV CMC LIBRARY

ASTOR. 1,EN«»X AND
TILHK.N r.,l*N!>AT10SS

Drawn by Emma Roch.

Tarkar Life in America 117

are going to buy, we will too." They bought
property from Meaher, who made them no con-
cessions. They worked and saved, going half
clad and living upon half rations. Though ac-
customed in their own country to Nature's lux-
uries, they now lived on molasses and corn-bread
or mush (boiled corn-meal) . The men worked in
the mills and their wives helped by planting
gardens and fruit trees and becoming venders of
fruit and vegetables. Their Tarkar home began
to be a chimera; day after day new ties pushed
it farther away.

Having no head of the tribe, and understanding
that in a country of different institutions a king
would be incongruous, they selected Charlee
(Orsey, in Tarkar), Gumpa (African Peter), and
Jaybee as judges to preside over the colony, to
arbitrate their differences, and direct their lives.
When disagreements came up, word would be
sent each member that there would be a meeting
at a certain place after dark — their only leisure
time — possibly at the home of one of the judges. f

1 These meetings probably account for the reports which have
been recurrent that the Tarkars met secretly and practiced
barbaric rites.

n8 Historic Sketches of the South

The offenders would be given a hearing before the
whole colony — each side would be weighed and
each reprimanded with a warning to " go and keep
the peace." If they again broke it, or renewed
their disagreements, they were punished — Jaybee,
Gumpa, or Charlee administering a whipping to the
culprits. Of these judges, there lives to-day only
Charlee, who has passed the century mark and is x
tottering on the brink of the grave. Yet the nine
surviving Tarkars, and each of these has seen his
three-score years and ten, look upon him as the
head, observe his admonitions, and never disobey
him. His face is one of the most kindly and he is
known among his people as never having disputed
or disagreed with any one. As old as they are, if
Charlee told them they could not do a thing, no
matter how strong the desire, they would not
disobey. The judges were not considered above
reproach. If any of the colony saw one of them
doing that which was wrong, he would be rebuked :
" We saw you do this thing. It is not right. How
do you expect us to do right if you do not show
us the way?"

1 Charlee too has recently passed away, 19 14.

Tarkar Life in America 119

About ten years after the close of the Civil War,
when the South was still largely under carpetbag
r6gime, interest in elections was intense and the
outcome of vital importance to the community.
Opposing parties used almost any means at their
command to obtain votes. Meaher went among
the Tarkars, explaining the methods and signi-
ficance of voting and urging them to vote the
Democratic ticket. He was followed by some
Republicans who promised them great rewards.
They talked this new thing over among themselves
and concluded that by voting the Republican
ticket they would gain much good. On election
day, Olouala, Poleete, and Kazoola walked, one
behind the other (a Tarkar custom), to the polls
at Whistler. Meaher was there ; he pointed them
out, "See those Africans? Don't let them vote —
they are not of this country." They were refused
so walked to McGuire's, but Meaher who had
been watching them and knew their persistency,
had ridden ahead and forestalled them ; they were
again refused. This only whetted their desire
and their determination, and they walked on down
St. Stephen's Road to the next voting place.

120 Historic Sketches of the South

Arriving there, Meaher was just getting off his
horse. "Don't let those Africans vote — they
have no right — they are not of this country."
Defeated again, the three now wanted to vote so
badly, that they put their hands together, raised
them to the sky, and prayed God that He would
permit them to vote. Strengthened, they walked
on to Mobile and at the polls on St. Francis Street
told their experience. They were informed that
by paying one dollar they could vote. This they
did and received a paper which they still treasure.
It was their one experience in politics, and it was
satisfying for they accomplished what they had
set out to do, though the great promises never
materialized.

Of the one hundred and sixteen Africans who
were brought to this country in the Clotilde, there
are only eight living: five women, Abach6 (Clara
Turner), Monabee (Kitty Cooper), Shamber,
Kanko (who married Jim Dennison), and Zooma;
and three men, Poleete, Kazoola (Cudjoe
Lewis), and Olouala (Orsey Kan). Their Tarkar
names have been used in this narrative at
their request. They love them and with some

Tarkar Life in America 121

pathos asked that they be used, because in some
way these names might drift back to their native
home, where some might remember them. This
small fragment gathers on Sundays after church
at the home of Poleete, Kazoola, or Abach6 and
discuss among themselves the things pertaining
to their welfare, and they never part without
speaking of their African home and telling some
incident of that beloved place. Kazoola says he
often thinks that if he had wings he would fly
back; then he remembers that all he has lies in
American soil — the wife who came from his native
land, who was his helpmate and companion
through the many years, and all his children. It
was at some of these Sunday afternoon gatherings
that he made the parables about his wife, Albin6
(Celie), which are a solace to him in his sorrow
and loneliness. The Sunday after her death, the
Tarkars were sitting with Kazoola in his home.
He sat with head bowed down, grief -stricken, and
speaking no word. They said, "Lift up your
head, Kazoola, and speak with us." Kazoola
lifted his head; "I will make a parable. Kazoola
and Albin6 have gone to Mobile together. They

122 Historic Sketches of the South

get on the train to go home and sit side by side.
The conductor comes along and says to Kazoola,
'Where are you going to get off?' and Kazoola
replies, 'Mount Vernon.' The conductor then
asks Albin6, 'Where are you going to get off?'
and she replies 'Plateau.' 1 Kazoola surprisedt
turns to Albin6 and asks, 'Why, Albin6! How
is this ? Why do you say you are going to get off
at Plateau?' She answers, ' I must get off.' The
train stops and Albin6 gets off. Kazoola stays on
— he is alone. But old Kazoola has not reached
Mount Vernon yet — he is still journeying on."

On the next Sunday they were again gathered
at Kazoola's house ; again he sat with bowed head,
and again they asked him to lift up his head and
make another parable.

"Suppose Charlee comes to my house and wants
to go on to Poleete's. He has an umbrella which
he leaves in my care. When he comes back he
asks for his umbrella — must I give it to him or
must I keep it?"

The listening Tarkars cried out, "No, Kazoola!
You cannot keep it — it is not yours!"

1 Mount Vernon is some miles beyond Plateau.

Tarkar Life in America 123

And Kazoola answered, "Neither could I keep
Albine; she was just left in my care." 1

Kazoola never married again; he sees Albin6
everywhere about the house. Everything re-
minds him of her. One day he was working in his
corn-patch, weeding out superfluous stalks. He
came to two growing together — the root of one
interwined with the other. He started to pull
one out, but something within told him to stop,
that thus had he and Albin6 grown together and
one stalk could not be pulled up without hurting
the other. So he saved the two, giving them
especial care, and he was rewarded by each bear-
ing four ears of corn. These he was going to save
for seed and grieves that a cow should have gotten
in and destroyed them. The old man is cheerful
— even merry — possessing a keen sense of humor
and a lively imagination. To appreciate him
fully he must be surprised at his home. There
he will be f ound probably working in his garden

'When Albine* first came to America she was very fat and
refused to eat except just enough to keep her alive. When she
grew to have confidence in the whites, she confided to Mrs.
Foster, " Albine* not eat when she first come to America, because
Albine* know she fat an' did not want white people to eat her."

124 Historic Sketches of the South

barefooted, trousers rolled up above his knees;
his costume clean but a marvelous piece of patch-
work, even the old derby upon his head a much
mended one. His patches need elicit no sympathy,
for patching is an accomplishment in which he
takes keen delight ; even in the old days when his
Albin6 was alive, she would wash his clothes and
lay them aside for him to patch during the evenings
when the day's work was done.

The Tarkars range in color from light to a very
dark brown. All bear upon their faces the Tarkar
tribal marks — two lines between the eyes and
three on the cheek. While quite distinct, these
marks are not disfiguring. Their teeth bear the
marks of family and of kinship and vary in each*
The process of marking the teeth was by pecking
with a stone implement. The lower corners of
Poleete's two front teeth where they meet are
pecked off, forming a wedge-shaped opening like
an inverted V. When Kazoola's teeth are closed,
on one side there is a circular opening which was
formed by cutting off parts of a half-dozen teeth.
Six of Abache's upper front teeth are trimmed to
make a convex opening. The Tarkars differ in

Tarkar Life in America 125

feature from the American negro; it is a subtle
difference but runs through the whole face. Their
heads differ structurally — the line from the fore-
head to the chin is nearer straight. They have
more top head and there is a fullness indicating
plenty of intelligence — a possession they have
exhibited in their neat homes and thrifty lives.
Some of them have even learned to read ; this was
taught them by their children who have profited
by the public schools. Poleete's constant com-
panion is a small, much worn New Testament.
Their countenances naturally vary with their
temperaments. Abach6's and Kazoola's are as
open as a book — intensely emotional and capable
of expressing very deep feeling. None have
gotten over the shock of their early experience.
When these are referred to there comes into
Kazoola's and Abach6's faces unspeakable and
indescribable anguish. Poleete's is like a mask,
unchanging, unscrutable, except for the eyes,
and these — small, deep-set, watchful — are almost
uncanny.

Among themselves they speak the Tarkar lan-
guage. Their English is very broken and is not

126 Historic Sketches of the South

always intelligible even to those who have lived
among them for many years. It has more the
sound of the dialect spoken by Italians than that
spoken by the negroes. They make almost con-
stant use of the " a" sound as a terminal — looka,
pulla, worka, etc. Their sentences are short and
vivid. The few words of old Gumpa, "My
people sold me and your people bought me,"
accompanied by his expression, told his whole
history.

They are extremely clean both about their
persons and their homes, and one of their strongest
objections to the average American negro is un-
cleanliness. Abach6 parts her hair in the middle
and combs it neatly back. She uses face powder,
because it is refreshing and leaves a cleanly feeling.
The other women are very old and feeble, except
Kanko who, though old, works as a man. Her
especial occupation is the breeding and raising of
a fine strain of hogs. The Tarkars are very con-
siderate of each other, and their intercourse is
marked by kindness, charity, and harmony.

In strong contrast to the Tarkars is old Zooma,
who is possibly the last Tarkbar. Rendered

THE NEW YORK

p W*"C LIBIUBY

>->

Draan by Emma Roc]
Charlee, Head of the Tarkars.

Tarkar Life in America 127

almost helpless by a century and more of years
and many pounds of superfluous flesh, she sits for
the most part silent and brooding in her squalid
hut. If near the door or window there are no
softening shadows, and the light reveals all her
fat, brutal old ugliness — an ugliness, accentuated
by disfiguring tribal marks — three deep gashes
meeting at the bridge of the nose, and running
diagonally across each cheek. Her underlip hangs
away as if it had been subjected in her native land
to some kind of African beautifying process. Her
hair is white and the skin of her hands and feet
wrinkled, resembling in texture that of an elephant,
and bearing the curious gray color seen in the
complexions of very old negroes. It is almost
impossible to understand her broken phrases, but
a daughter acts as interpreter. Brooding, she is
pathetic; aroused and speaking of home she is
tragic. She has in common with the Tarkars the
same pitiful history and the same despair, without
their resignation. For each and all, Heaven could
hold no promise so rapturous as just one last
vision of home. Such a vision that comes as they
sit together, which bows their old heads, lays

128 Historic Sketches of the South

silent fingers upon their lips, and speaks to their
aching hearts of perpetual summer, fertile lands,
abundance of fruit — of youth, plenty, and peace —
their Land of Long Ago.

CHAPTER X

IMPRESSIONS OF ALABAMA IN 1846 1

The trip of Lafayette through this country in
the twenties was more or less spectacular, and the
places he visited are to-day pointed out as historic,
yet only twenty years later Lyell, whose name will
go down the ages linked with Goethe, Lamarck,
and Darwin, covered much the same ground, and
it is only in scientific works that one is reminded
of the fact. In recent reading, after meeting with
several references to his stay in Alabama, I be-
came interested, and it was with intense delight
that I was carried back and saw our own section
through the eyes of that wonderful observer and
thinker. All awe of Charles Lyell, scientist and
arch-destroyer of the anthropocentric idea which
for so many centuries fettered the world of thought,
was at once dispelled, for there was that in his
charming geniality that makes the "whole world

'Reprinted from South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1908.
9 "9

130 Historic Sketches of the South

kin" — even a Charles Lyell and the pine-woods
squatter, whose hospitality he often accepted
when on geologic excursions.

Lyell made two trips to the United States — the
first in 1841-42, which furnished material for his
Travels in North America. He came as far south
as Savannah. His Travels in the United States is
the record of his second visit, when Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana formed a
part of his itinerary. Aside from the geologic
importance of these two works, there could scarcely
be a more faithful portrayal of American manners,
customs, and peculiarities. They were largely
instrumental in ameliorating British animosity
by giving the English a better and kindlier under-
standing of Americans. At the time of their
publication, they naturally found in this country
a circulation only among the few, and are now rare
books. His observations on the social conditions
that made the South unique and that have been
obliterated during the lapse of a half century are
deeply interesting to the student of to-day.

On January 15, 1846, we find Lyell and his wife
entering Macon, Georgia, by train. His eye was

THE NEW YORK

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ASTOH. LKNOX AND
TILDKX F(H~NI)ATIONS
B 1 L

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Impressions of Alabama in 1846 131

immediately attracted by "a wooden edifice of
very peculiar structure and picturesque form,
crowning one of the hills." Learning that it was
a blockhouse that had been in real service as a
fort against Indians only twenty-five years before,
when this frontier knew not the white man's
habitat, it was with a mixed feeling of amusement
and incongruity that he received the information
that a conspicuous building nearby was a "female
seminary, lately established by the Methodists,
where all young ladies take degrees."

From Macon to Columbus, Georgia, he had his
first experience in a Southern stage-coach which,
while novel, must have proved far from comfort-
able, for he did not forget to record the jolts caused
by miserable roads and reckless driving. Leaving
Columbus he was soon in the undulating pine-
lands of Alabama, the monotony of which was
frequently broken by swamps of palmetto and
magnolia. The spirit of the pines must have sting
to him, too, for the "sound of the wind in the
boughs of the long-leaved pine" always reminded
him of the " waves breaking on a distant shore, and
it was agreeable to hear it swelling gradually, then

132 Historic Sketches of the South

dying away as the breeze rose and fell." Near
Chehaw, the stage stopped at a log cabin in the
woods for the passengers to dine. It did not look
promising, and Lyell was ready to "put up with
bad fare," but on entering found on the table
"a wild turkey roasted, venison steaks, and a
partridge-pie, all the product of the neighboring
forest/' Noticing the stumps of many pines, he
counted the rings of annual growth to ascertain
how long it would take to replace such a forest.
The oldest tree that he examined measured four
feet in diameter at three feet above the base, and
showed three hundred and twenty rings. He also
found the ravines that are common throughout
Southern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to
be of recent formation and caused by deforesta-
tion, showing the tertiary regions and also part
of the cretaceous strata which have "always been
as destructible as now" to have been from the
beginning covered with dense forests. Where
the trees have been cut, the sun's heat on the clay
often causes cracks, and when the rains come in
semi-tropical torrents these deepen until such
ravines as are familiar to Mobilians about Spring

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 133

Hill are the result — only they are of more rapid
growth.

At Chehaw they took train for Montgomery.
Even at that early time, and in a region "where
the schoolmaster has not been much abroad,"
we meet the prototype of the newsboy of to-day ;
LyelTs picture of him unconcernedly jumping
on and off moving trains is the "butcher-boy"
we all know. One boy was calling out in the midst
of a pine-barren, "a novel by Paul de Kock —
the Bulwer of France — all the go ! — more popular
than the Wandering Jew." Lyell, having bought
newspapers promiscuously throughout the many
States he visited, found our press to be in every
way on an equal with that of Great Britain. A
large portion of the papers was "devoted to literary
extracts, to novels, travels, tales, and often more
serious subjects."

Reaching Montgomery, he remained there a
few days examining the geologic formations and
remains of that region. It was his intention to
go directly to Tuscaloosa, only one hundred miles
distant by land, but every one advised him that
he would at that season save both time and money

134 Historic Sketches of the South

by taking an eight hundred mile trip down the
Alabama River by boat to Mobile, and up again
on the Tombigbee. The Amaranth was scheduled
to leave at ten o'clock, January 28, 1846. Ac-
customed to Northern punctuality, they went
down on time, and learned with some annoyance
that she might not sail until the next day. It was
his first sight of our "magnificent Southern river
boats." He and Mrs. Lyell made up their minds
to look on it as "their inn and read and write
there" and were soon enjoying "its luxuries which
Southern manners and a hot climate require."
He describes very fully the peculiar construction
which adapts the boats to rivers which rise and
fall rapidly. When recording that some of them
could float in two feet of water, he adds, "but
they cannot quite realize the boast of a western
captain, that he could sail wherever it was damp."
It would be too much to write in detail of all
the things which interested Lyell, for nothing seems
to have escaped him. At each landing, however,
he collected many cretaceous fossils, so concluded
to stop a few days at Claiborne, whose bluff had
long been known to geologists as " classic ground,"

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 135

having already yielded four hundred species of
tertiary shells, belonging to the Eocene forma-
tion. He notes, too, the finding of a fossil zeuglo-
don in the same cliff by Mr. Hale of Mobile,
"The morning after our arrival, January 29th, the
thermometer stood at eighty degrees F. in the
shade, and the air was as balmy as an English
summer day. Before the house stood a row of
Pride-of-India trees ladened with bunches of
yellow berries. I had often been told by the
negroes that the American robin 'got drunk' on
this fruit, and we now had an opportunity of
witnessing its narcotic properties ; for we saw some
children playing with one of these birds before the
house, having caught it after it had eaten freely
of these berries. My wife, seeing that the robin
was in no small danger of perishing, bought it of
the children for some sugar-plums, and it soon
revived in our room, and flew out of the window.
In the evening we enjoyed a sight of one of those
glorious sunsets, the beauty of which in these
latitudes is so striking, when the clouds and sky
are lighted up with streaks of brilliant yellow, red,
and green, which, if a painter should represent

136 Historic Sketches of the South

faithfully, might seem as exaggerated and gaudy
as the colors of an American forest in autumn
when compared with European woods."

He crossed the river to visit the Blounts at
Woodlawn. Leaving his wife with Mrs. Blount,
he went with Mr. Blount by carriage to Clarks-
ville, where the enormous fossil zeuglodons had
been found. "The district we passed through
was situated in the fork of the Alabama and Tom-
beckbee rivers, where the aboriginal forest was
only broken here and there by a few clearings.
At Macon my attention was forcibly called to
the newness of things by my friend's pointing out
to me the ground where there had been a bloody
fight with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and how
the clerk of the Circuit Court was the last sur-
vivor of those who had won the battle." The
Indian paths, still tractable through the forests
near Tuscaloosa, awakened the same feeling. On
his return he and his wife crossed to Claiborne
to await the Mobile steamer, and he expresses his
pleasure at finding it, the Amaranth, commanded
by his "old friend Captain Bragdon."

Reaching Mobile, the Tuscaloosa steamer was

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 137

ready to start, so they were soon northward
bound on the Tombeckbee, then so high "that the
trees of both banks seemed to be growing in a
lake." Arriving at Tuscaloosa where there was a
"flourishing college" he was met by Mr. Brumley,
the professor of chemistry who at once conducted
him to the outlying coal-fields. He found the
coal, even of the strata exposed to the surface to
be "excellent quality and highly bituminous."
Here there is a bit of justification in Huxley's
criticism of LyelTs aversion "to look beyond the
veil of stratified rocks," for while he notes with
seeming satisfaction the imprints of the fossil
plants in the black shale to be exactly the same as
those existing in the "ancient coal-measures of
Europe and America," there is no foreshadowing
of the explanation given by recent geology and
astronomy, that even as late as the early carboni-
ferous era, there were no seasons, the earth being
wrapped in a uniform, vaporous warmth greater
than the heat now existing in the tropics; a heat
which came not from the sun, but the earth itself.
One proof lies in the fact that irrespective of lati-
tude, the same organic remains are found — their

138 Historic Sketches of the South

nearest of kin of to-day living only in the tropics ;
also that there are no rings of annual growth in
carboniferous tree-life.

Lyell and Professor Brumley extending their
wanderings, "entered about thirty-three miles
northeast of Tuscaloosa a region called Rooke's
Valley, where rich beds of iron-stone and lime-
stone bid fair, by their proximity to the coal, to
become one day a source of great mineral wealth.' f
He was not only indebted to Professor Brumley
for much scientific information, but also to Mr.
Bernard, the teacher of astronomy, who showed
him some "double stars and constellations not
visible in England," — the telescope a recent acqui-
sition from London. Mrs. Lyell also made many
friends in Tuscaloosa, among them two ladies
who were reading as a "pastime Goethe and
Schiller in the original."

From Tuscaloosa to Mobile Lyell had splendid
chances of studying the geological character of
the country, and he frequently expresses apprecia-
tion of the courtesy and assistance always given
him throughout Alabama, contrasting it with the
"ignorant wonder" the fossil hunter inspires in

Tin- :;kw yokk

PUBLIC LI Bit Alt Y

j&STOIt, UENOX AND
THLi^N FOl*NI)ATIONS
U } ' L

Zooma, the Last Tarkbar.

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 139

unfrequented districts of England, France, and
Italy. He was anxious to examine the calcareous
bluff at St. Stephen's. Night fell before they
reached it, but Captain Lavargy stopped, said he
could take on wood, gave him a boat and two
negroes bearing pine torches, thus making it
possible for him to thoroughly explore the whole
cliff and find many fossils.

Mobile again claims him on February 21, 1846,
and flaunts her spring forwardness by touches of
green on the cypress and cotton trees, and scarlet
seed-vessels on the rubra. "In the gardens there

■

were jonquils and snow-drops in flower, and for
the first time, we saw that beautiful evergreen, the
yellow-jessamine, in full bloom, trailed along the
wall of Dr. Hamilton's house." Anxious for his
first sight of the Gulf of Mexico; he drove with
Dr. Hamilton, the Presbyterian minister, to the
light-house (situated on Choctaw Point and washed
away by the storm of 1852), and, from the tower
had a "splendid view of the city to the North, and
to the South the noble bay of Mobile, fourteen
miles across." He then went to the bay which
lay "smooth and unruffled, the woods coming

140 Historic Sketches of the South

down everywhere to its edge." He noted the
immense amount of driftwood, dug up bivalve-
shelled gnathodons that live in our mud-banks,
and that will in future ages indicate the position
of our rivers. He found Mobile to be built upon
a deposit of these shells, the stratification of
which proved that it had been thrown up by the
waves. Our delta, in the soft mud of which
cattle are frequently mired and which receives
carcasses washed down by the rivers and thrown
up by the sea, exemplifies the formation of such
regions as the Fayum of Egypt — the elephant's
ancestral home — now covered by desert sands,
but which is each day yielding priceless treasure
to the paleontologist.

On February 23d, the James L. Day, bound for
New Orleans, " sailed out of the beautiful bay of
Mobile in the evening,' ' carrying aboard Charles
Lyell and his wife.

At the time of Lyell's visit, Alabama lay strug-
gling in the grasp of that spirit of unrest which from
the most remote antiquity as often obsessed people
of the Aryan race, calling them ever westwards
towards the setting sun. Everywhere he met

fc

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 141

" movers" — Texas masking as the Promised Land,
beckoning to the cultured as to the ignorant.
Adventure prompted many, others knew not why
they were going, some were "eaten out by their
negroes," and one informant said: "If we remain
here, we are reduced to the alternative of high
taxes to pay the interest of money so improvi-
dently borrowed from England, or to suffer the
disgrace of repudiation, which would be doubly
shameful, because the money was received in hard
cash, and lent out, often rashly by the State to
farmers for agricultural improvements. Besides,
all the expenses of the Government were in reality
defrayed during several years by borrowed money
and the burthen of the debt thrown on posterity.
The facility with which your English capitalists,
in 1 82 1, lent their cash to a State from which the
Indians were not yet expelled without reflecting
on the migratory nature of the white population
is astonishing. The planters, who got the grants
of your money and spent it, have nearly all of them
moved off and settled beyond the Mississippi."
But Lyell had faith in Alabama's natural resources,
which he felt were so great that only a moderate

142 Historic Sketches of the South

amount of economy would be necessary to sur-
mount all embarrassments.

Texas and the probability of war with England
over the Oregon Question were topics discussed
on every hand. Lyell would hear the English
adversely criticized and such boasts as "we have
whipped them twice, and should whip them a
third time," but where his nationality was known,
he says, "never once were any speeches, uncour-
teous in their tone towards my country, uttered
in my hearing."

On his geologizing trips, which would have often-
times been hard on any one not riding his own
hobby, he was forced to stop where night over-
took him, so that even the habits of the "crackers "
became familiar to him. "In many houses I
hesitated to ask for water or towels, for fear of
giving offense . . . nor could I venture to ask
any one to rub a thick coat of mud off my trousers,
lest I should be thought to reflect on members of
the family, who had no idea of indulging in such
luxuries themselves. I felt the want of a private
bed-room, but very soon came to regard it as a
privilege to be allowed even a bed to myself." In

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 143

his wanderings, he also met " clay-eaters " s — a peo-
ple curious in their cravings for certain kinds of
clay. Their peculiar green complexion indicating
anemia, which usually terminates in dropsy, was
formerly considered a sequence to the gratification
of this abnormal appetite, but is now supposed to
be a result of a pathogenic parasite f ound in the
small intestine. a The type is still a most familiar
one in the hill-country just west of Mobile.

When dubious about safety from highwaymen,
Lyell was assured that in the South this class
was unknown; the working class being the slave
class there was no poor made desperate by want.
And that the Texas wars had relieved the different
communities of their dare-devil spirits.

1 There is very little literature about this class which is found
in many parts of the world, and even that consists mostly of
references to them by travelers and ethnologists. The fullest
account with which I am familiar is an article by my uncle, the
late Prank L. James, Ph.D., M.D., "The Geophagi, or Dirt
Eaters," which appeared in the National Druggist, of March,
1900. Microscopic examinations made by him of the "dirt"
used by our Alabama, Georgia, and Carolina geophagians showed
it to be a ferruginous argilla about ten per cent, diatomaceous.
The "dirt eaters" of the various countries do not eat any kind
of clay, but uniformly affect an argillaceous substance, containing
more or less infusorial matter.

a Since the first publication of this article, hookworm investi-
gations and treatment have become common in all infected
districts of the South.

144 Historic Sketches of the South

Lyell was often amused and astonished at the
Southerner's loyal support of an ultra-Democratic
notion of white equality, which in practice must
have been thoroughly uncongenial to all classes
concerned. He visited a lawyer at his country
home — the family a cultivated one, used to the
best society of a large city — but the host regarded
it as an obligation to invite LyelTs driver, who
was half Indian, to sit down to the table with
them. Perhaps a consciousness that this boasted
equality was more or less fictitious may have been
responsible for the vindictive envy which flourished
in the midst of this "aristocratic democracy."
A jealousy so intense that a gentleman growing
rich and settling in a quiet part of the country
was apt to have his fences pulled down, cattle
turned out to roam, and other indignities perpe-
trated. Many anecdotes of the genuineness and
prevalence of this feeling were told to Lyell. The
daughter of a member of the Legislature visited
Mobile, had a dress made with flounces according
to the latest fashion, and on her return home wore
it to a ball. At the next election her father was
defeated, and on asking a former supporter the

Impressions of Alabama in 1 846 145

cause received the reply, "Do you think they
would vote for you, after your daughter came to
the ball in them fixings ?"

Lyell found drunkenness very common, yet
heard many speak of the great temperance reform,
it being no longer considered an insult to refuse
to drink with one's host. While he saw no cruelty
to slaves, he felt that when drunkenness was so
general among the owners their power might
often be an abusive one. He states that it was
not the object of his visit to study slavery, but
his interesting observations would fill a chapter
and are characterized by a keenness and fairness
which make them very valuable. The stories told
him by disgruntled and misinformed Northern-
ers had prepared him for blood-curdling atrocities,
but throughout Alabama he saw the negro in
many phases : in his churches, about his pleasures,
and at his occupations that ranged from farm-
hand to mechanic; in the slave-market, as the
indulged domestic, and as the faithful and cheer-
ful follower of his master into new and unknown
regions; and on no occasion had he reason to
suspect maltreatment. When speaking to a

146 Historic Sketches of the South

Northern man of his favorable impressions, he
was told that "great pains had been taken by the
planters to conceal the true state of things" —
that he had been "propitiated by hospitable
attentions." Lyell found his own experience
corroborated in a Tradesman's Journal, written
by William Thompson, a Scotch weaver, who
supported himself by his trade as he journeyed
through the South.

After seeing what contact with the whites had
done for the negro, Lyell entertained very sanguine
hopes of the race's intellectual and moral possi-
bilities, and was impatient of what seemed to him
unjust laws which restricted the black educationally
and politically. His two-sided attitude is a bit
disarming, but is explained by himself. "We are
often thrown into opposite states of mind and
feeling, according as the interest of the white or
negro happens, for the moment, to claim our sym-
pathy." But the following words embody an
unbiased and a beautiful tribute to the influence of
the Southerners: "In spite of prejudice and fear,
and in defiance of stringent laws enacted against
education, three million of a more enlightened and

Impressions of Alabama in 1846 147

progressive race are brought into contact with an
equal number of laborers lately in a savage
state, and taken from a continent where the
natives have proved themselves, for many
thousand years, to be singularly unprogressive.
Already their taskmasters have taught them
to speak, with more or less accuracy, one
of the noblest of languages, to shake off
many old superstitions, to acquire higher ideals
of morality, and habits of neatness and cleanli-
ness, and have converted thousands of them
to Christianity. Many they have emancipated,
and the rest are gradually approaching to the
condition of the ancient serfs of Europe half
a century or more before their bondage died
out.

11 All this has been done at an enormous sacrifice
of time and money ; an expense, indeed, which all
the Governments of Europe and all the Christian
missionaries, whether Romanist or Protestant,
could never have effected in five centuries. Even
in the few States which I have already visited
since I crossed the Potomac, several hundred
thousand whites of all ages, among whom the

148 Historic Sketches of the South

children are playing by no means the least ef-
fective part, are devoting themselves with greater
or less activity to these involuntary educational
exertions."

THE END

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